PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostThe latest from PRI's The World and the GlobalPosthttp://www.pri.org/
en-usFans mourn the loss of a beloved Pakistani pop singer-turned-preacherhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/fans-mourn-loss-beloved-pakistani-pop-singer-turned-preacher
<p>Growing up, musician Rutaba Yaqub loved listening to Junaid Jamshed.</p>
<p>Jamshed rose to fame in the 1980s and '90s — as the leader of a pop-rock band called Vital Signs. He was popular not just during Yaqub's generation, but also her mother's.</p>
<p>"My mother was in college when she started listening [to his music]," says Yaqub. "I think our kids and their kids, they're going to listen to Vital Signs. It's so fresh, it's as if it happened yesterday."</p>
<p>But Jamshed's voice will no longer be. He died Wednesday after the commercial airliner he was on crashed in the mountains north of Islamabad. He was among 47 people who died in the accident.</p>
<p>"I still can't believe it," says Yaqub, for whom Jamshed was an inspiration. "He was the guy who made me believe that music can live in Pakistan and that there's still hope for the industry in Pakistan," she explains.</p>
<p>After the Sept. 11 attacks, Jamshed began to slowly move away from pop music. He became a follower of the Tablighi Jamaat, a highly conservative movement.</p>
<p>Yaqub says she felt very sad when she found out that Jamshed would no longer be singing, but she respected his decision.</p>
<p>Jamshed didn't stop his artistic work completely, though. He wrote religious poems.</p>
<p>Since she learned about the crash, Yaqub says she has been listening to her favorite songs by Jamshed.</p>
<p>One in particular stands out. It goes, "Even if I die, don't cry, and remember me by my songs."</p>
<p><em>Read our previous <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-10-28/how-saudi-singer-found-her-voice-and-her-freedom-pakistan">reporting on Rutaba Yaqub</a>.</em></p>
Music, Arts, Culture & Mediahttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/fans-mourn-loss-beloved-pakistani-pop-singer-turned-preacherThu, 08 Dec 2016 17:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldJunaid Jamshed was a legendary figure in Pakistani pop music. He was killed in a plane crash north of Islamabad Wednesday. His fans were devastated.A boy plays with a paper plane near the site of a plane crash in the village of Saddha Batolni near Abbotabad, Pakistan, on Dec. 8, 2016.
[field_credit]Trump's call with Taiwan spawned a wave of cartoonshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/trumps-call-taiwan-spawned-wave-cartoons
<p>If China and Taiwan are uttered in the same sentence, it usually means trouble.</p>
<p>President-elect Donald Trump found that out after taking a call from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen this month. Poof! There went decades of Washington's foreign policy procedure toward Taiwan.</p>
<p>Here's how some cartoonists reacted.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="601" width="900" alt="The Chinese symphony" title="The Chinese symphony" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Pareth.jpg?itok=QojbYyTd" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>The Chinese symphony is shown here. </p>
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<p>Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Diplomatic discussion going well. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpTaiwan?src=hash">#TrumpTaiwan</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/harrymcgee">@harrymcgee</a> <a href="https://t.co/WWxCTY7uAa">pic.twitter.com/WWxCTY7uAa</a></p>
<p>— Harry Burton (@HBtoons) <a href="https://twitter.com/HBtoons/status/805079297803358208">December 3, 2016</a><br /></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="ja" xml:lang="ja"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E8%AE%8A%E6%85%8B%E8%BE%A3%E6%A4%92%E6%BC%AB%E7%95%AB?src=hash">#變態辣椒漫畫</a> 日本Newsweek專欄 川普和蔡英文即將見面嗎？普京對習近平的背後一刀！「トランプ劇場」に振り回される習近平 | 辣椒（ラージャオ、王立銘） | コラム＆ブログ | ニューズウィーク日本版 オフィシャルサイト <a href="https://t.co/tVAPUjOME3">https://t.co/tVAPUjOME3</a> <a href="https://t.co/74lkv00ycK">pic.twitter.com/74lkv00ycK</a></p>
<p>— 变态辣椒 (@remonwangxt) <a href="https://twitter.com/remonwangxt/status/806790438032052224">December 8, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">"Taiwan Calling" <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/trumpconflictofinterest?src=hash">#trumpconflictofinterest</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpTaiwan?src=hash">#TrumpTaiwan</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TaiwanCall?src=hash">#TaiwanCall</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/US?src=hash">#US</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Trump?src=hash">#Trump</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrumpTransition?src=hash">#TrumpTransition</a> <a href="https://t.co/7tWvxV4lVB">pic.twitter.com/7tWvxV4lVB</a></p>
<p>— antonio rodriguez (@rodriguezmonos) <a href="https://twitter.com/rodriguezmonos/status/806230366713356288">December 6, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="378" width="900" alt="Trump in the China shop." title="Trump in the China shop." class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Sampaio.jpg?itok=J60aJp0B" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Trump in the China shop.</p>
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<p>Cristina Simpaio, Portugal</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="zh" xml:lang="zh"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/badiucao?src=hash">#badiucao</a> cartoon 【Taiwan Call Crisis？】<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Trump?src=hash">#Trump</a> spoke with the president of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Taiwan?src=hash">#Taiwan</a> on Friday <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E5%B7%B4%E4%B8%A2%E8%8D%89?src=hash">#巴丢草</a> 漫画 【台湾来电】<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E5%B7%9D%E6%99%AE?src=hash">#川普</a> 周五和 台湾总统 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/%E8%94%A1%E8%8B%B1%E6%96%87?src=hash">#蔡英文</a> 通话，打破美国79年以来的惯例！ <a href="https://t.co/ep30Px9eDT">pic.twitter.com/ep30Px9eDT</a></p>
<p>— 巴丢草 Badiucao (@badiucao) <a href="https://twitter.com/badiucao/status/804903583061680128">December 3, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">The Taiwanese animation company, <a href="http://us.tomonews.com/">TOMO News</a>, released an animated cartoon about Trump's phone call with Taiwan's president. </p>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Global Politics, Election 2016, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/trumps-call-taiwan-spawned-wave-cartoonsThu, 08 Dec 2016 17:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldWhen Donald Trump accepted a phone call from Taiwan's president, it sparked a wave of commentary — written and drawn.Trump is pictured here in a China shop.
[field_credit]'The Elephants in My Backyard' is a great book for any artist searching for purpose http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/elephants-my-backyard-great-book-any-artist-searching-purpose
<p>The book, "Life of Pi," changed Rajiv Surendra's life.</p>
<p>He's an actor, born and raised in Toronto. And he first read "Life of Pi" years ago, while working on the set of "Mean Girls." You might remember him as Kevin G.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9KY8WU0oa3I?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p>He found he had a lot in common with Pi. Like the protagonist, he was Tamil, lived near a zoo and was fascinated with religion. “It was a beautiful, written story, and I felt like it was a story that had been written about my life,” he says. “The following week I found out that they were taking that book and turning it into a movie.”</p>
<p>Surendra lost it with excitement. “Up until that point, the only part I could try out for as a young Indian actor in Toronto were for terrorists or math nerds. So, I never thought I’d be able to try out for a starring role in a major Hollywood movie. ”</p>
<p>So, he went all in, preparing for the part. He dropped out of college and flew to the school portrayed in the novel. What he didn't know is that journey to be Pi would end with a huge disappointment.</p>
<p>He chronicles that trip in his new book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Elephants-My-Backyard-Memoir/dp/1682450503">The Elephants in My Backyard: A Memoir.</a>"</p>
<p>It’s not a spoiler to give away the ending. Surendra didn’t get the part. That’s because it isn’t the real ending of the book. Simply put, the journey is worth it even if it is difficult or the destination is devastating. The book offers lovely lessons on life.</p>
<p>As for the movie, it did get made. And the role of Pi went to a schoolboy.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/j9Hjrs6WQ8M?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p>“You know, when I was doing research in India for the part, I hung out with these 16-year-old India kids. And I thought to myself a few times, ‘They could just come here and hire one of these kids to play the part and, ironically, that’s what ended up happening.”</p>
Media, Arts, Culture & Mediahttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/elephants-my-backyard-great-book-any-artist-searching-purposeThu, 08 Dec 2016 17:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldA book changes the life of an actor. It sets him on a journey that ends with one of the biggest disappointments of his life. But how he rebounds is the bigger lesson. Rajiv Surendra is shown here on the cover of his new memoir, "The Elephants in My Backyard."
[field_credit]The 'ethnic cleansing' of Myanmar's Rohingya community is underwayhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/ethnic-cleansing-myanmars-rohingya-community-underway
<p>Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is often seen as a place of military rule, gradually moving towards democracy. But in recent weeks, a new story has emerged: what one UN official called the "ethnic cleansing" of a religious minority.</p>
<p>Refugees fleeing the affected areas have told horrendous stories of rapes, killings and house burnings. These claims are denied by the government. </p>
<p>Following a military crackdown, at least 10,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority have fled their homes. John McKissick, head of the UN High Commission for Refugees in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox's Bazar, told the BBC that Myanmar was involved in "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingyas. The military campaign was retaliation for attacks by Rohingya insurgents. </p>
<p>The Rohingya community is Muslim and has linguistic and cultural links to neighboring Bangladesh. The vast majority of Myanmar's population is Buddhist. </p>
<p>The government has banned journalists from entering Rakhine state, where most of the atrocities are believed to be happening. But members of the Rohingya community have recorded the testimonies of women who claim to have been raped and have witnessed the killings of male relatives. Refugees arriving in Bangladesh have made similar claims about atrocities being committed in Rohingya villages. </p>
<p>Satellite imagery of Rakhine state also shows villages destroyed by fire.</p>
<p>According to journalist Mobeen Azhar, who recently returned from Myanmar, hostility towards the Rohingya is driven by a fear of <em>Islamicization</em> and a growth in Buddhist nationalism. "This Buddhist nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon in Myanmar, and it is gaining a lot of traction," he said. "It reflects the international situation where a lot of minority groups are being scapegoated. Many average citizens of Myanmar are facing hardship, and many are living in poverty."</p>
<p>The Burmese government has so far denied any wrongdoing. Myanmar's civilian leader, Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, has said the media has misunderstood the situation. She told Singapore's Channel News Asia that “It doesn’t help if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation, in spite of the fact that there were attacks against police outposts.”</p>
Conflict, Conflict & Justicehttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/ethnic-cleansing-myanmars-rohingya-community-underwayThu, 08 Dec 2016 17:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldMyanmar, formerly known as Burma, is often seen on as a place of military rule, gradually moving towards democracy. But in recent weeks a new story has emerged: what one UN offical called the 'ethnic cleansing' of a religious minority.
Refugees fleeing from the affected areas have told horrendours stories of rapes, killings and house burnings, although these claims are denied by the government. A Rohingya mother and her son weep at a border checkpoint into Bangladesh. Thousands have crossed the border to escape the violence.
[field_credit]The long and tawdry history of yellow journalism in Americahttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/long-and-tawdry-history-yellow-journalism-america
<p>Fake news is nothing new. Its impact has waxed and waned through American history. But there was a golden age of <em>yellow journalism</em>, back in the 1890s, when fake news helped start a war.</p>
<p>Yellow journalism has been defined as any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical manner.</p>
<p>The term was coined in the 1890s to describe the ferocious circulation war between William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer.</p>
<p>They sought out crime, scandal and salacious detail. Facts that got in the way of a gripping story could be left out. Imaginary details could be added. Any excuse to include an image of a scantily-clad woman was welcome. </p>
<p>The goal was to create a sensation that would prompt people to buy copies of the paper. In other words, truth was sacrificed, a victim to profit.</p>
<p>There were some benefits to this kind of muckraking. Corruption and incompetence were ruthlessly exposed, and some good causes were adopted, even if the stories were pushed unethically.</p>
<p>One cause adopted by both papers in the 1890s was that of the revolutionaries in Cuba, fighting for independence from Spain. The rebels were cast in the same mold as the patriots who fought for American independence. Spanish atrocities were played up; rebel atrocities were ignored. The editorial line was that America should help.</p>
<p>In 1898, the US Navy battleship, the USS Maine, blew up while off Havana, Cuba, killing more than 250 Americans. The cause was never discovered. But the yellow press jumped to the conclusion that the Spanish did it deliberately. “Remember the Maine” became the slogan of the yellow press, driving public opinion toward war.</p>
<p>There were plenty of other factors behind the Spanish-American War of 1898, but the conflict was in part enabled by this barrage of misleading journalism. </p>
Culture, Global Politics, Arts, Culture & Media, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/long-and-tawdry-history-yellow-journalism-americaThu, 08 Dec 2016 15:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldAmerica has a long and storied tradition of fake or distorted news. The golden age of yellow journalism was the 1890s and helped start a war. This is part of the front page of the New York Journal, from Feb. 17, 1898, when fake news helped start a war.
[field_credit]In South Korea, parents are increasingly saying, 'we hope for a girl'http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/south-korea-parents-are-increasingly-saying-we-hope-girl
<p>In South Korea, there’s a new saying: “To have two daughters wins you a gold medal.” But this wasn’t the case a single generation ago, when couples would go to great lengths to conceive a son. A country’s reverence for boys has turned into a slight preference for girls. </p>
<p>My Korean aunt, who is nearly 80, remembers the day she gave birth to her fourth daughter. “I cried so much, I almost fainted,” she says. “I couldn’t believe I had another daughter. Four daughters.” </p>
<p>She continues, “I had to keep having children, because I thought I needed a son. It’s the only reason I have four kids. Not because I wanted four kids.” There was immense pressure from her own mother, my grandmother, to give birth to an heir to the family.</p>
<p>Traditionally, Korea has been a Confucian society, which meant that sons inherited most of the property and carried on the family name. So in my aunt’s generation, there are plenty of families with multiple daughters, and then finally a son.</p>
<p>But when ultrasound technology was introduced to South Korea in the late 1980s, suddenly far fewer girls were born.</p>
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<p>When ultrasound technology was first introduced to SouthKorea in the 1980s, gender selective abortions became common. Now physicians are prohibited from telling patients the gender of a child, until late in the second trimester, when an abortion is much less likely.</p>
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<p>“So many people aborted babies back then,” my aunt says. “A few months in, when they could tell it was a girl, they’d get an abortion.” </p>
<p>In the 1990s, there were 116 boys born for every 100 girls in South Korea. Gender imbalances at birth have also existed in other Asian countries like China and India. According to some estimates, there would have been 112 million more girls on the continent of Asia, had gender selective abortion and infanticide not existed. </p>
<p>In South Korea, the consequences were seen years later when the surviving boys grew up. There weren’t enough women to marry in rural Korea — due to selected abortions and young, educated women moving to the big cities — so men turned to foreign mail order brides. </p>
<p>Now fast-forward 25 years to a new generation of parents, and many young Korean couples would prefer daughters. My cousin Seoyoung, who is a young mom, shares a new Korean saying with me: “There’s really no use in having a son, because they just grow up to leave you, to take care of their wives.” </p>
<p>In the past in Korean society, a son was required to carry out your family’s ancestor worship. It’s a set of elaborate Buddhist rituals in which the eldest son offers sacrificial foods to the family’s deceased ancestors. Only men could make the offerings, while the women were required to prepare the food, often for days in advance. </p>
<p>But as Koreans are holding less tightly to Buddhist traditions — many have converted to Christianity — and people living longer, they’re less concerned about being honored after death, and more concerned about being cared for while alive. As it turns out they say daughters are better for this than sons.</p>
<p>In the past, your oldest son and his wife would live with you until the end of life, but that’s no longer the case. Sons are moving out when they get married, and parents are burdened with buying them new homes. This, while more elderly are living alone.</p>
<p>In contrast, young women like Seoyoung are moving closer to their aging parents. Because daycare options are limited, she depends on her mom for childcare. So now her parents have an adult daughter nearby to help them out with things like hospital visits and finances. In 2016, women have the means to do this, because girls are outperforming boys in school and getting better entry-level jobs.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-original_image"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/GovernmentBillboard.jpg?itok=aUZkcE3h" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>A government-sponsored ad encourages families to have more children in South Korea. It reads: “A sibling is a gift, a forever friend.” In 2016, many young couples are opting for a single child, so grandparents are happy to have a grandchild of any gender.</p>
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<p>Laws have changed too, allowing sons and daughters to inherit equally from their parents. When gender selective abortions peaked in the 1990s, the Korean government prohibited physicians from revealing a baby’s gender in utero. Doctors who broke the rules had their licenses revoked and some were even sent to jail. The law was loosened later, and now obstetricians can share a baby’s gender with patients in the second trimester, when an abortion is much less likely.</p>
<p>As a result, in 2016, the ratio of boys born in South Korea, compared to girls, is back on par with global averages. There are 105 boys born for every 100 girls each year.</p>
<p>The laws of nature dictate that a few more boys are born than girls, but overall, the numbers are almost even. </p>
<p>As for my cousin Seoyeong, she’s grateful for her 2-year old daughter, and doesn’t plan on having more. “I was so relieved that I didn’t have to have a second baby,” she shares. “I think I’ve gotten what I want.”</p>
<p>Her friends with sons, though, they still talk about trying for a daughter, but they worry about the prospects of having another boy. According to Seoyoung, “That would be a disaster, they say.”</p>
<p>My elderly aunt gathers with friends at a community center. They talk about the careers they wished they had had, and brag about the children they raised, both their sons and their daughters. </p>
<p>“Of course, I was disappointed then,” my aunt shares. “But now I think, maybe I did a good job, having those girls. My daughters, they know my heart. So I’m not lonely.”</p>
<p>But South Korea can still be a hard place for women, they admit. There’s the immense pressure to conform to an unattainable standard of beauty, often through plastic surgery. Harassment in public is still common, and women aren’t promoted at work in the same way as men. </p>
<p>I ask then, when it comes to grandchildren, do they prefer granddaughters to grandsons? Well, as it turns out, many young couples are choosing to have just one child or to be childfree. So most grandparents, they’re grateful to have any grandchild at all.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-original_image"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/SiblingsinWaitRoom.jpg?itok=xKaoOa43" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>A brother and sister pair in a hospital wait room. Sons were traditionally needed to worship a family’s ancestors, but now that people are living longer, they’re more concerned about who will care for them in old age.</p>
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Development, Development & Educationhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/south-korea-parents-are-increasingly-saying-we-hope-girlThu, 08 Dec 2016 14:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldSouth Korean so preferred having boys that the country had to implement a law requiring doctors to refrain from revealing a baby's gender until late in the second trimester, so as to avoid sex-selective abortions.A pregnant woman in the obstetrics and gynecology ward at Severance Hospital in Seoul, Korea. Couples once went to great lengths to conceive a son in Korea. But some young parents now say they would prefer a daughter.
[field_credit]Care not where giraffes wear neckties. Care that they might go extinct.http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/care-not-where-giraffes-wear-neckties-care-they-might-go-extinct
<p>The question caused a storm on social media last week: Would a giraffe wear a tie at the top or the bottom of its neck?</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">When giraffes go to work do you think they put the tie at the top or bottom of their necks?</p>
<p>Asking for a friend. <a href="https://t.co/e3cFarF75P">pic.twitter.com/e3cFarF75P</a></p>
<p>— jeremy hammond (@jeremythunder) <a href="https://twitter.com/jeremythunder/status/799267381881217024">November 17, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>The debate was fierce, and consensus elusive.</p>
<p>But there's another giraffe question that's a little more urgent: Do we care if they go extinct? Because according to conservationists, our tall, spotted friends are on their way to disappearing.</p>
<p>The International Union for Conservation of Nature has added giraffes to their <a href="http://www.iucnredlist.org/news/new-bird-species-and-giraffe-under-threat-iucn-red-list" target="_blank">Red List of Threatened Species</a>, the group announced in a press release on Thursday.<strong> </strong>The IUCJ noted a "devastating decline for the giraffe, driven by habitat loss, civil unrest and illegal hunting," adding that the zoo favorite's global population has "plummeted by up to 40 percent over the last 30 years." The group also listed dozens of bird species that are newly threatened.</p>
<p>As is so often the case, humans are to blame for most of the giraffe's hardships. "Illegal hunting, habitat loss and changes through expanding agriculture and mining, increasing human-wildlife conflict, and civil unrest are all pushing the species towards extinction," the IUCJ said. "Of the nine subspecies of giraffe, three have increasing populations, whilst five have decreasing populations and one is stable."</p>
<p>Native to Africa, giraffes are the world's tallest animals. The herbivores live about 25 years in the wild. <a href="http://www.thepetitionsite.com/621/908/016/ask-african-governments-save-the-giraffe-from-extinction/" target="_blank">Petitions to protect the animals</a> have pushed governments to implement conservation policies, while <a href="http://www.awf.org/projects/west-african-giraffe-conservation" target="_blank">independent groups</a> have worked to preserve their habitats.</p>
<p>“As one of the world’s most iconic animals, it is timely that we stick our neck out for the giraffe before it is too late,” said Julian Fennessy, co-chair of the IUCN’s Giraffe and Okapi Specialist Group.</p>
<p>We'll leave you with some photos of these majestic mammals.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="546" width="900" alt="giraffes Amboseli Kenya" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/RTSV7G6.jpg?itok=Hdh_PK7B" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>A giraffe runs in Amboseli National park, Kenya on Aug. 26, 2016.</p>
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<p>Goran Tomasevic/Reuters</p>
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<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="603" width="900" alt="giraffe serengeti" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/RTR2QYN.jpg?itok=8_ARsjGA" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>In 1997, then-first lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea saw a giraffe up close at the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.</p>
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<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="593" width="900" alt="giraffes Naboisho Kenya" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/RTR497T2_0.jpg?itok=KtStJMdp" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Giraffes are seen in the Naboisho Conservancy adjacent to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, October 6, 2014.</p>
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<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="541" width="900" alt="Giraffes mossel bay" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/RTR2F2WL.jpg?itok=vD7FRXcd" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Giraffes graze at Botlieskop Day Safaris, near Mossel Bay, South Africa, in June 2010.</p>
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<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="649" width="900" alt="giraffe UAE" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/RTR29RIZ.jpg?itok=VqOjjTb-" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>A giraffe drinks water at Al Ain Zoo in the United Arab Emirates, February 2, 2010.</p>
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<p>Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters</p>
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<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="600" width="900" alt="giraffes Australia" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/RTR4H72P.jpg?itok=cl5TF7YV" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>A family of giraffes look out from their enclosure at Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo in December 2014.</p>
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Economics, Lifestyle, Science, Environment, Business, Finance & Economics, Lifestyle & Belief, Science, Tech & Environmenthttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/care-not-where-giraffes-wear-neckties-care-they-might-go-extinctThu, 08 Dec 2016 11:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldAs is so often the case, humans are to blame for most of the giraffe's hardships. A 3-day-old giraffe stands next to its mother at Jerusalem's Biblical Zoo on Feb. 24, 2016.
[field_credit]The child sex trade is booming in this Kenyan port cityhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/child-sex-trade-booming-kenyan-port-city
<p>Inside a tiny house outside the city of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya, 11-year-old Sabina sits on a bed, one of her breasts exposed, a 2-year-old on her back.</p>
<p>With an effortless click, the girl shoots a jet of saliva through the gap between her two front teeth. It lands on the floor. Then she begins to talk as she shifts the toddler from her back to her bosom.</p>
<p>“The father of this child is a German tourist,” she said. “He impregnated me and left the country after his vacation. I was forced to drop out of school and take care of the child.”</p>
<p>Sabina is one among many children in this coastal region who have become mothers at too young an age. She and other girls, as well as underage boys, have left school to cater to men and women who pay them for sex.</p>
<p>And the market is booming: Child sex tourism has remained rampant in Mombasa, a port city, despite a spate of terror attacks in the past three years that have scared away package vacationers, crippling a vital tourism sector that contributes about 10 percent to Kenya’s gross domestic product.</p>
<p>European travelers especially have continued to fuel the trade. Many come to the city in search of girls aged between 12 and 18. The industry has made Kenya one of the world's hubs for child sex tourism, researchers say.</p>
<p>“We always believe that white men have money, so when they come here we hope that they will get us out of poverty,” said Sabina. “They give us a lot of money and sleep with us. We use the money to pay rent for our parents and buy food.”</p>
<p>Trace Kenya, a local nonprofit group that works with the United Nations to battle child trafficking, estimates there could be as many as 100,000 child sex workers in Mombasa. The trade extends up and down the coast to the seaside resort towns of Malindi and Diani, according to the NGO.</p>
<p>In a 2010 report — the most recent available — UNICEF released numbers on child trafficking in Kenya that revealed that almost a third of girls age 12 and younger in the Mombasa region were involved in prostitution. European men comprise half of the clients, the report said.</p>
<p>Sex tourism has been blamed in Kenya for increasing rates of school dropouts, poverty and illiteracy as school-age children skip class in pursuit of easy money. At the same time, poverty is the main driver behind child sex tourism, say experts. Some parents even urge their children to become involved.</p>
<p>Emily, a 16-year-old orphan, said she was forced into the business due to poverty and peer pressure. Her aunt encouraged her to engage in sex with white men to help pay family expenses. Emily is now infected with HIV.</p>
<p>“I have slept with different men, especially whites from Germany, Italy and the USA,” she said. “I regret it but I had no option [at] that time. I started the business at age 10, when a friend connected me to an Italian tourist who had visited the country for three months. I had nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep.”</p>
<p>Teenage boys and 20-something Kenyan men known as "beach boys" also hook up with older white women, usually Western tourists who have flown here specifically for sexual encounters.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="675" width="900" alt="Jomo Kenyatta Public Beach Pirates" title="Jomo Kenyatta Public Beach Pirates" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/KEN160618TO002.jpg?itok=Ea3uf0tJ" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Jomo Kenyatta Public Beach.</p>
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<p>Against a backdrop of dazzlingly white sand and the aquamarine sea at Jomo Kenyatta Public Beach, foreign women sip cocktails under bamboo shades. Young men approach them with compliments designed to break the ice.</p>
<p>“This is our work,” said Alex Mwalumba, a beach boy who said he’s 29 but looks much younger. “It’s very simple to lure a white woman. First, know the language she speaks. Secondly, tell her she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. For the first time in years, she truly believes she is desirable.”</p>
<p>Mwalumba had few regrets.</p>
<p>“The money will begin to flow,” he said, referring to payments once a temporary relationship has begun. “Some [beach boys] have used the opportunity to build good houses and start businesses.”</p>
<p>But he warned that business sometimes can be risky.</p>
<p>“Some tourists end up either being robbed or murdered by beach boys in pursuit for money,” he noted. “Beach boys are not after love. They are after money. They sometime trick tourists to go to the room and rob them.”</p>
<p>Paul Adhoch, who heads child rights organization Trace Kenya, said prostitution has led to an increase in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers in Mombasa. It has also broken up families in the city, he said.</p>
<p>Trace Kenya is working to rescue girls from the sex trade and to end the practice in the Mombasa region. The NGO has rescued more than 10,000 children in the last seven years, putting them in shelters and making other arrangements for them to earn a living.</p>
<p>“We have rescued many children involved in sex tourism or those who were potentially likely to fall into it, more girls — for young men the number has been lower,” he said. “The police have done little to fight the vice. They have given tourists impunity despite having evidence against them.”</p>
<p>But Regional Police Chief Nelson Marwa says the government has done a lot to battle the practice, including warning tourists and parents against being involved in the business.</p>
<p>“We have put in place laws that will deal with such acts,” Marwa said. “Already we have arrested and charged parents, children and some tourists. We will also close all hotels that allow young girls and old tourists to check in together, and their licenses will be canceled.”</p>
<p>The real problem, Adhoch believes, is culture.</p>
<p>“There is a culture among parents and children that when you get yourself a white man, then you have gotten yourself out of poverty,” said Adhoch. “Tourists always take this advantage and will come here deliberately for that.”</p>
<p>But Sabina, who is still struggling to come to terms with her HIV-positive status, wants the government to do more to help girls in the local sex industry.</p>
<p>“The government should curb the practice by arresting tourists whose aim is to engage in sex with children and dump them afterward,” she said. “They are creating more poverty for young people here like me.”</p>
<p><em>Editor's note: The last names of children interviewed for this story have been withheld to protect their identities. Tonny Onyulo reported from Mombasa, Kenya.</em></p>
Economics, Justice, Education, Development, Business, Finance & Economics, Conflict & Justice, Development & Educationhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-08/child-sex-trade-booming-kenyan-port-cityThu, 08 Dec 2016 06:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostGlobalPostThe industry has made Kenya one of the world's hubs for child sex tourism, researchers say, catering especially to Europeans.
The scene at Jomo Kenyatta Public Beach in Mombasa, Kenya, where so-called "beach boys" ply their trade.
[field_credit]NASA's Earth and climate research might be in jeopardy under Trumphttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/nasas-earth-and-climate-research-might-be-jeopardy-under-trump
<p>"A sincere search for areas of common ground.” That’s what Al Gore called<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/politics/climate-change-trump-al-gore.html"> his surprise meeting this week with President-elect Donald Trump</a>. </p>
<p>Gore, of course, is one of the leading voices for aggressive action to fight the <a href="http://www.pri.org/tags/climate-change">climate crisis</a>, while Trump has famously called climate change <a href="http://admin.pri.org/stories/2016-07-21/donald-trump-says-climate-change-hoax-former-gop-congressman-says-position">"a hoax</a>."</p>
<p>Their meeting in Trump Tower in New York on Monday briefly gave a sliver of hope to people who want Trump to pivot to a position more in line with the global scientific consensus on climate change — that it's real, that it’s already having a serious impact, and that humans are largely responsible.</p>
<p>But that hope may well have been dashed with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0">Wednesday’s news</a> that Trump has picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the agency chiefly responsible for implementing US climate policy, the EPA. Pruitt is a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and a fierce opponent of President Barack Obama’s signature plan to cut greenhouse emissions from power plants.</p>
<p>The move is the clearest sign yet that Trump plans to stick to his promise to reverse the US’ course on climate policy.</p>
<p>But the reversal may not be limited to policy. It may also extend to climate science itself.</p>
<p>That at least was the indication of a Trump advisor, who said recently that the new administration wants to dial back or even eliminate one of the main sources of data on our changing climate — NASA’s Earth science program.</p>
<p>NASA, of course, is most widely known for its moon landings, Mars rovers, planetary flybys and telescopes aimed at distant stars, but a big piece of its mission has always been focused on our own planet. Among other things, the agency has <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/?eocn=topnav&eoci=logo">a suite of Earth-orbiting satellites</a> that track everything from vegetation to volcanic activity to melting ice and other impacts of increasing concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.</p>
<p>But the future of those Earth-oriented satellites could be in jeopardy. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research">a recent report in The Guardian</a>, a senior Trump advisor said the new administration wants to steer NASA away from Earth science and focus almost exclusively on space exploration.</p>
<p>That would be a big change with big consequences.</p>
<p>“Earth has always been part of the NASA portfolio,” says <a href="http://cires.colorado.edu/administration-council-fellows/waleed-abdalati">Waleed Abdalati</a>, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/abdalati_bio.html">former chief scientist at NASA</a>.</p>
<p>Abdalati notes that the first line of the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/public_law_111-314-title_51_national_and_commercial_space_programs_dec._18_2010.pdf">NASA charter</a> defines its purpose as “the expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”</p>
<p>“In the list of things that NASA should be doing, that appears as number one,” Abdalati says.</p>
<p>He says the view of the whole Earth that NASA has from space is critical to national security and smart policy-making. He cites monitoring of melting polar ice caps as just one example.</p>
<p>“There are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/science/global-warming-antarctica-ice-sheet-sea-level-rise.html?_r=0">things that could happen in west Antarctica</a> that will make the difference between two feet of sea-level rise this century and 20 feet of sea-level rise this century,” Abdalati says. “And if we don’t pay attention to that, <a href="http://world.time.com/timelapse/">watch the story unfold</a>, improve our models to get our arms around that, we’re at great risk. It’s in our interest to know this.”</p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="600" width="900" alt="“In the list of things that NASA should be doing, (the study of earth) appears as number one,” says former chief NASA scientist Waleed Abdalati, who now teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Abdalati says turning NASA away from monitoring such" title="Abdalatu" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Waleed_Abdalati_2_credit_Nick_Mott.jpg?itok=j3u5Er-s" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>“In the list of things that NASA should be doing, (the study of earth) appears as number one,” says former chief NASA scientist Waleed Abdalati, who now teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Abdalati says turning NASA away from monitoring such things as the effects of climate change, as has been proposed by advisors to President-elect Trump, could put us "at great risk.”</p>
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<p>But for many critics in the Trump camp, NASA’s focus on tracking things like melting ice and other indicators of climate change follows more of a political agenda than a scientific one.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smith_Walker">Robert Walker</a>, the Trump advisor and former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who spoke to The Guardian, has called the activities of the NASA Earth Science Division <a href="http://spacenews.com/trumps-space-policy-reaches-for-mars-and-the-stars/">“politically correct environmental monitoring.”</a> He told The Guardian that while “climate research is necessary… it has been heavily politicized.”</p>
<p>Walker didn’t respond to an interview request, and he didn’t elaborate to The Guardian on what he meant by “politicized,” but many other conservatives have claimed that the science documenting global climate change is a smokescreen for liberal social and economic policies.</p>
<p>On the broader point of politicization, though, many climate researchers actually agree, although they might point in a different direction.</p>
<p>“We simply got into this field to try to understand the Earth system and try to take very exact measurements as best we can,” says <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-committee/members/dr-steven-w-running">Steven Running</a>, a professor at the University of Montana and the chair of the Earth Science Subcommittee for the NASA Advisory Council. “And it's to our horror that people turn this into a political football when we're just trying to deliver facts.”</p>
<p>Few independent observers dispute that NASA is just delivering the facts on climate change. And Running reiterates that climate research is just one part of <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science">NASA Earth</a>. Information from the satellites is used to plan military missions, forecast crop yields, track wildfires and prepare for extreme weather events.</p>
<p>“Look at hurricanes,” Running says. “We see the hurricanes coming days in advance. It didn't used to be that way before satellites. Agriculture, of course, drought monitoring. And it turns out fishermen follow ocean temperatures to improve their fishing success.”</p>
<p>Fishermen like Matthew Upton, of <a href="https://www.roffs.com/">Roffer’s Ocean Fishing Forecast Service</a> in Melbourne, Florida.</p>
<p>“We do a bunch of different things with the satellite data,” says Upton. His company collects data from 10 to 20 of those satellites every day, organizes it into charts, and sells those to both commercial and recreational fishermen heading out to sea.</p>
<p>“It saves people money and time in the long run,” Upton says, “instead of just heading offshore and hoping for the best.”</p>
<p>And Upton’s business isn’t only about fishing. It also uses NASA satellite data to improve safety on oil rigs, plan shipping routes and more. If the incoming Trump administration pulls the plug on NASA Earth, they’d be pulling the plug on all this, and Upton’s company.</p>
<p>“It would be a huge hit,” Upton says. It might even put his company out of business. But he says “it’s a bigger deal than just a few small companies. The bigger picture is that it’s providing data for us, for the world, to survive in the future.”</p>
<p>Like Walker, no other members of the Trump transition team responded to our interview requests, so it’s still unclear much the new administration might try to change NASA’s focus. But another indication may have come last week, when former congressional staffer Christopher Shank was named to the transition team for NASA. Shank served as a top aide to Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who has long denied the reality of human-caused climate change.</p>
<p>Related: <a href="http://admin.pri.org/stories/2016-11-18/world-climate-activists-us-please-dont-be-rogue-state-under-trump">World climate activists to US: Please don't be a 'rogue state' under Trump | Public Radio International</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pri.org/tags/climate-change">Climate Change | Public Radio International</a></p>
Environment, Science, Tech & Environmenthttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/nasas-earth-and-climate-research-might-be-jeopardy-under-trumpWed, 07 Dec 2016 17:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldThere are the specific policy proposals coming out of the transition team, including one that could seriously dial back or even eliminate one of the main sources of data on the earth’s changing climate — NASA’s Earth science program.NASA's earth science program might be at risk under the Trump Administration.
[field_credit]How do wars end? Not usually with unconditional surrender.http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/how-do-wars-end-not-usually-unconditional-surrender
<p>The civil war in Syria may be entering a decisive phase. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have seized almost all of the key city of Aleppo from rebels. Some analysts are talking about the end of the war. But how do wars end?</p>
<p>Americans tend to think of wars ending with the unconditional surrender of one side, as happened in World War II and in America’s own Civil War. But that’s pretty unusual, according to Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, and author of the book, “How Wars End.” </p>
<p>“Clausewitz — the great military theorist — defined war,” says Rose, “as the continuation of politics with the addition of other means — military force.</p>
<p>“So, the way to think about the end of a war is not a boxing match, with a knockout,” explains Rose, “but rather as a political relationship that essentially continues with actual force no longer being used.”</p>
<p>In the real world, he says “that happens if the parties decide that they know how it’s going to end, and they essentially no longer need to keep fighting. Because they can see the outcome, and they just accept it. Or they essentially know they’re going to have a draw and figure it’s not worth continuing to try to push up against a brick wall and agree to have a long-term settlement.</p>
<p>“But,” as Rose explains, “the key is basically all parties to the conflict coming to a similar view of what is happening and what the trends are in the future. Until you have that, as long as there’s hope for one side that they might get back up, or that the current reverses could be fixed, there’s always a strong tendency to keep battling it out.”</p>
<p>Rose says the Syrian conflict is still in that phase. Unconditional surrender, or even conditional surrender, seems pretty unlikely.</p>
<p>“Syria and Iraq — they’re really now part of a common area,” says Rose. “The war that’s happening is a consequence of the collapse of political order in these countries, whether from the outside because we toppled Saddam’s regime, and never really replaced with any stable order afterwards, or in Syria because of the Arab Spring and the uprisings and the partial victories early on. So, it’s not really a conventional war.”</p>
<p>The conflict between the Assad regime and the rebels is only one of the conflicts in Syria: there's ISIS, there's al-Qaeda, there's the Kurds. Now the Turks have a presence.</p>
<p>“This is really 'Game of Thrones,'” says Rose, referencing the hit HBO series. “I’m not being facetious. If you want to understand what’s going on in Syria, it looks much more like medieval Europe than it does contemporary Europe. This is not just large-scale military forces directed by high-level strategists sitting in their bunkers, fighting it out on a Maginot Line. This is a whole welter of competing factions with nobody able to impose order across the country. Lots of different groups, lots of lines of authority, lots of outside players.</p>
<p>“That’s why it is so complex, and that’s why it is so hard,” says Rose, “to bring it to conclusion. Because essentially the conclusion of the war has to be some stable political settlement.</p>
<p>“When you think about it that way, it’s not just a military outcome. The war in Syria and Iraq only ends when there’s some sort of stable political settlement in the country, and that means either one side wins, or there’s an agreed-upon division in the country, or you have a fixed frozen conflict in which things stay, but they’re not really decided upon, but no-one wants to challenge them. But none of those things seems immediately likely in the very near future. So, I would expect things to continue. It’s a tragedy, but it’s even more complex than people think, which is why all the policies towards it are bad.”</p>
Conflict, Conflict & Justicehttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/how-do-wars-end-not-usually-unconditional-surrenderWed, 07 Dec 2016 16:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldThe rebels in Syria have lost control of most of their foothold in Aleppo. Some say the defeat of the rebels there could be decisive. Others say the eventual fall of Aleppo is unlikely to end the war in Syria. But it does raise the possibility of movement in that direction. So how do wars end?The dove, a symbol of peace, flies over a mosque in Afghanistan.
[field_credit]Trump’s nominee for Homeland Security spent the final part of his military career working south of the borderhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/trump-s-nominee-homeland-security-spent-final-part-his-military-career-working
<p>There are many ways that President-elect Donald Trump has begun the process of doing exactly what he promised on the campaign trail vis-a-vis immigration. He’s chosen for his cabinet hard-liners on immigration and continued his tough rhetoric on who we allow into the US as refugees.</p>
<p>We’re reporting on many of these issues in <a href="http://www.pri.org/globalnation">Global Nation</a>, but occasionally we will also highlight the things Trump has said or done that have the potential to alter the lives of immigrants in the US. This week, we learned more about who will be creating and implementing Trump’s policies, but we have not learned more about what those policies are. Here’s what you need to know.</p>
<p><strong>From Gitmo to the borders:</strong> Retired Gen. John Kelly, who oversaw the detention center at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been named Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Military Times has <a href="http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/general-john-kelly-donald-trump-homeland-security-secretary-of-state">more on his background</a>.</p>
<p>The department houses US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the major agencies that handle immigration issues and that detain and deport people from the US. Kelly will be in charge of implementing large parts of Trump’s immigration agenda, which could include <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-11-14/trump-clarifies-who-he-means-deport-theyre-already-prioritized-deportation">increasing deportations</a> and <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-09-01/giant-border-wall-between-us-and-mexico-here-are-five-images-show-how-complicated">expanding the walls on our southern borders</a> (which, famously, Trump has guaranteed Mexico will pay for).</p>
<p>Kelly is the recently retired head of the US Southern Command, which includes Central and South America and the Caribbean. He told Congress in 2014 (<a href="http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/2014_SOUTHCOM_Posture_Statement_HASC_FINAL_PDF.pdf">PDF</a>) that he was working with ICE to “aggressively target criminal networks that traffic in special interest aliens and contraband throughout the region.” He also said that, without additional resources, it would be difficult to stop smuggling and deaths in a “mass migration event.”</p>
<p>That summer, when the mass migration of families fleeing violence in Central America began, he asked for more resources for the military to help stem the migration, and to reduce the amount of drugs and weapons being brought across the southern border. Defense One has a <a href="http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2014/07/top-general-says-mexico-border-security-now-existential-threat-us/87958/">good explanation of the debate and Kelly’s position</a>.</p>
<p>In March 2015, Kelly supported the Obama administration’s request for $1 billion in aid to Central America. “The cost of investing now to address Central America’s challenges is modest compared with the costs of letting festering violence, poverty, and insecurity become full-blown crises,” he said in a statement to Congress (<a href="http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FINAL_2015.pdf">PDF</a>).</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting, as Alan Rappeport of the New York Times has, that it was at this time last year that Trump advocated for not allowing Muslims to enter the US. His press release read, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">On this day in 2015: Donald Trump called for "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" <a href="https://t.co/jKYuZQER3W">https://t.co/jKYuZQER3W</a></p>
<p>— Alan Rappeport (@arappeport) <a href="https://twitter.com/arappeport/status/806463966272778240">December 7, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>But recent days have brought some, if small, signs of a softening of Trump's stance on immigration.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2016-donald-trump/?xid=homepage">Time magazine’s profile of Trump as “person of the year,”</a> the president-elect offered some measure of support for those brought here as children who currently have temporary work permits and relief from deportation under Barack Obama’s executive action, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.</p>
<p>“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” he told Time. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”</p>
<p><strong>Legal leader:</strong> Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has been nominated as attorney general. Among his many powers, if confirmed (and it’s likely he will be confirmed with the support of Senate Republicans), will be oversight of the backlogged immigration court system. The attorney general appoints immigration judges and can, though rarely does, unilaterally overturn their decisions.</p>
<p>He could also choose which cases to investigate. Politico offers a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/jeff-sessions-immigration-crackdown-231800">good rundown of the immigration-related powers of the position</a>.</p>
<p>Lawyers and advocates have expressed concern about Sessions’ views on immigration — he was mentored by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, famous for being a segregationist, and was not confirmed as a federal judge in 1986 because he was <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/11/21/ted-kennedy-called-for-rejection-jeff-sessions/ffKYasaQfb6GylxwoAxu7M/story.html">accused of making racist statements</a>. Sessions was adamantly against comprehensive immigration reform measures in 2013; in 2015, Sessions wrote a 25-page “immigration primer” that explains his opposition to the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill.</p>
<p>Instead of creating legal migration pathways, he advocates limiting all immigration — legal and illegal. “We need make no apology in rejecting an extreme policy of sustained mass immigration,” he writes (<a href="https://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/67ae7163-6616-4023-a5c4-534c53e6fc26/immigration-primer-for-the-114th-congress.pdf">PDF</a>). Alabama news site AL.com has <a href="http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2016/11/from_goat_hill_to_capitol_hill.html">more about Sessions’ political record</a>.</p>
<p><strong>For your health (and refugees):</strong> Rep. Tom Price, who Trump has tapped as his secretary of Health and Human Services, is mostly being analyzed for what he might do in the area of health insurance, but he could also a have a big role to play in immigration. HHS helps resettle refugees by providing resources for them once they are in the country.</p>
<p>They also help care for the thousands of children who have crossed the southern border alone, largely to escape violence in Central America. Almost 60,000 children crossed in the past year, <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-border-unaccompanied-children/fy-2016">according to Border Patrol</a>. The nonpartisan <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/immigration/the-u-s-refugee-resettlement-program-a-primer-for-policymakers.aspx">National Conference of State Legislators has found</a> that caring for these children has increased considerably over the past decade — in 2015, the cost of refugee resettlement was $1.5 billion — but it remains <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2016/budget-in-brief/index.html#">a sliver of the larger HHS budget</a>.</p>
<p><img height="530" width="750" alt="Chart showing cost of refugee resettlement" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/www.ncsl.org/portals/1/ImageLibrary/WebImages/Immigration/refugee-funding_750.jpg?itok=haixh-jR" title="" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trumps-pick-to-lead-health-agency-to-confront-immigration/">This Seattle Times report</a> on Tom Price’s record on immigration issues is helpful. He has called for an end to the resettlement of Syrian refugees — the US is on track to <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-08/it-s-now-clear-most-syrian-refugees-coming-united-states-are-women-and-children">admit some 10,000 Syrians, of about 5 million</a> who have have been displaced by the conflict there. Price has also said that emergency spending on children who arrive in the US alone might be necessary, but that the Obama administration has been “unable or unwilling to articulate a competent strategy on how it hopes to restore the rule of law and prioritize security along the border,” thus fueling the crisis.</p>
<p>Many who have studied the issue, though, say <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-15/us-policy-toward-migrant-children-enticing-them-cross-us">Obama’s policies have little effect on people’s decision to send their children</a> on dangerous journeys to the US. <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-18/these-salvadorian-parents-detail-their-sons-harrowing-journey-meet-them-us">Fear and desperation are the main drivers</a>, say parents who made the difficult decision when the crisis first began in 2014.</p>
<p><strong>Desegregation — or not — in housing:</strong> Ben Carson at first said he did not want a position in Trump’s administration. The neurosurgeon, who ran against Trump in the GOP presidential primary, cited his lack of government experience as why he wasn’t an appropriate choice for the cabinet. He changed his mind, however, after Trump asked him to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development.</p>
<p>Carson has no housing policy experience, but he has criticized the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce housing discrimination and segregation in US cities.</p>
<p>The New York Times’ Upshot has a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/upshot/how-ben-carson-at-housing-could-undo-a-desegregation-effort.html">good picture of what he has said on issues</a> of race and religion. In 2015, he said on Meet the Press that he didn’t think a Muslim should be president and that the religion is inconsistent with the Constitution. And he <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/ben-carson-islam-not-religion">told a Mother Jones reporter </a>that he doesn’t consider Islam a religion.</p>
<p>The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968; in addition to barring most discrimination in housing, it also directed the government to “affirmatively further” integration, but severe racial segregation still exists in America’s cities. (A <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/12/08/census-shows-modest-declines-in-black-white-segregation/">Brookings Institute study</a> found that more than half of all black people in the 52 largest metropolitan areas would have to move in order for our cities to be integrated.)</p>
<p>The Obama administration last year attempted to address this second part of the FHA by providing cities with data about segregation and requiring them to come up with plans to address it. Carson, in charge of HUD, would be able to determine the degree to which the agency prioritizes this second part of the FHA. He would also oversee the Federal Housing Administration, which backs a huge share of financing for first-time homebuyers.</p>
<p><em>What did I miss in Trump immigration news this week? Start a conversation in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalnation/">Global Nation Exchange</a> discussion group on Facebook, tweet at us with the hashtag #globalnation or send me an email at <a href="mailto:ashah@pri.org">ashah@pri.org</a>.</em></p>
Global Politics, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/trump-s-nominee-homeland-security-spent-final-part-his-military-career-workingWed, 07 Dec 2016 15:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldPlus, this week in the president-elect’s policies, an immigration hardliner for attorney general and the prospects for continued segregation in America.Gen. John Kelly, right, speaks with Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina in 2013. Kelly spent the last four years of his military career as commander of the US Southern Command before his retirement in February. President-elect Donald Trump has selected him as director of homeland security.
[field_credit]A South Korean cartoonist mocks his country's oppressive office culture http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/south-korean-cartoonist-mocks-his-countrys-oppressive-office-culture
<p>Artist Yang Kyung-soo believes South Korean office culture represents a mix of two things: Confucianism and military hierarchy.</p>
<p>The result is an atmosphere in which employees must “follow their boss’ orders without exception,” the 32-year-old says, adding the he doesn’t think office workers "have any freedom to express their own opinions at their jobs.”</p>
<p>This top-down dynamic is the subject of his popular single-frame illustration series called "Yakchjkii."</p>
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<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-original_image"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/pic3%20%E1%84%8E%E1%85%A5%E1%86%AB%E1%84%87%E1%85%AE%E1%84%83%E1%85%A1%E1%86%B7%E1%84%86%E1%85%A1%E1%86%AB%E1%84%87%E1%85%AE%E1%84%83%E1%85%A1%E1%86%B7.jpg?itok=MO9fCoa0" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Boss (left): "Oh, don't work so hard, you should take a break."<br />Man at computer: "I was taking a break until you came over here."</p>
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<p>Yang Kyung-soo, Yakchjkii, South Korea</p>
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<p>An authoritarian, passive-aggressive or even creepy boss is a figure many Korean office workers have to deal with, the artist says — or at least, that’s what he’s heard. </p>
<p>“I’ve never worked in an office myself, but I have a lot of friends who do." Yang says. “The only time they can open up about how they feel is after work, when they’re drinking. I ask them why can’t they tell their opinions to their bosses, but they tell me it's impossible.”</p>
<p>In Yakchjkii, Yang gives his office worker characters the power to say things that their real life counterparts could never get away with.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-original_image"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/pic1%20%E1%84%87%E1%85%A9%E1%84%85%E1%85%A1%E1%86%B7_0.jpg?itok=SJw4BqnD" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>The boss (on the right) holds a bag with the words "Feeling Rewarded" on it. </p>
<p>The employee (on the left) says: "You've got to be kidding me."</p>
<p>The caption above them reads: "I don't need to feel rewarded, just pay me overtime."</p>
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<p>Yang Kyung-soo, from Yakchjkii, South Korea</p>
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<p>Despite the rigors of office life in South Korea, most people are still drawn to these types of jobs because they provide financial stability, the artist says. Not landing a position in a big company or as a civil servant can cause tension in some families, he says, including his own. Yang's own parents are artists but they have steady jobs. He studied fine arts at university and is now a freelancer. It's caused a rift in his own family that has never been repaired.</p>
<p>“We haven’t spoken for the past 10 years and I doubt they even know about how my career has gone,” he says.</p>
<p>Yang says he now makes a decent living as an artist. Recently his Yakchjkii drawings were published in book form. He also plans to expand the series to depict other occupations. But Yang says he’s not giving up on his first artistic passion — Buddhist-inspired paintings.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-original_image"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/7%E1%84%82%E1%85%A9%E1%86%A8%E1%84%8B%E1%85%AF%E1%86%AB%20%E1%84%8E%E1%85%AC%E1%84%8C%E1%85%A9%E1%86%BC%20copys.JPG?itok=FM7GLlQ8" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>South Korean artist <a href="https://yangkyungsoo.com/buddha-works/">Yang Kyung-soo</a>'s first passion is Buddhist-inspired paintings. He believes his cartoons are also rooted in his Buddhist beliefs. </p>
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<p>Yang Kyung-soo, South Korea</p>
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<p>He doesn’t see any contradiction between creating that kind of art and making cartoons about Korean office culture.</p>
<p>“They both give me balance in my life,” he says. “Maybe one is serious and the other isn’t, but they are both a part of me.” Yang says that it’s perhaps Buddhism that makes him question whether he’s living to work or working to live. It’s something he thinks everyone should be contemplating.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-original_image"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/pic4%20%E1%84%82%E1%85%A1%E1%86%AB%E1%84%83%E1%85%A1%E1%86%AF%E1%84%85%E1%85%A1.jpg?itok=1vMR7Dzh" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Words across top of cartoon: "I live the same as others today, so that later I can live differently." </p>
<p>Words spoken by each worker: "I'm different."</p>
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<p>Yang Kyung-soo, Yakchjkii, South Korea</p>
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Arts, Culture, Media, Business, Arts, Culture & Media, Business, Finance & Economicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/south-korean-cartoonist-mocks-his-countrys-oppressive-office-cultureWed, 07 Dec 2016 15:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldSouth Korean office culture is overbearing. Many bosses act like generals. Artist Yang Kyung-soo lets workers say what's really on their mind in his cartoon "Yakchjkii." Boss: "You remind me of my daughter."
Woman: "But you only have two sons."
[field_credit]A fake US Embassy operated for 10 years in Ghanahttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/fake-us-embassy-operated-10-years-ghana
<p>For the last 10 years, Ghana had two US embassies. One is an imposing, high-security building, surrounded by wide lawns and palm trees. The other was a small office building covered in peeling paint.</p>
<p>And while both of them issued documents meant to grant permission to travel to the United States, only the first did so legally and with the approval of Washington, DC.</p>
<p>The other "embassy" was an elaborate scam, run to exploit people from across West Africa hoping to travel to the States. People would be lured to the fake embassy and charged for travel documents.</p>
<p>The false embassy appears to have been a complex operation. Every effort was made to convince travelers that they were in a genuine US government building. The office was staffed with white people as well as black Ghanaians and flew the stars and stripes during office hours. A portrait of Barack Obama was hung on one of the walls, and visitors were seen by appointment only.</p>
<p>There was little effort to keep the scam a secret. According to the US State Department, its services were publicly advertised in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo.</p>
<p>"For about a decade it operated unhindered," the State Department <a href="http://www.state.gov/m/ds/rls/263916.htm#.WEEJueX0ObM.twitter" target="_blank">wrote</a>. "The criminals running the operation were able to pay off corrupt officials to look the other way, as well as obtain legitimate blank documents to be doctored."</p>
<p>The BBC's Sammy Darko says the criminals involved targeted poorer and less educated people whom they thought would be less likely to see through the deception.</p>
<p>"They drove to remote parts of West Africa to find customers," Darko says. "They would shuttle the customers to [Ghana's capital] Accra, and rent them a room at a hotel nearby."</p>
<p>When police finally raided the false embassy, they found 150 passports from 10 countries. Each fake visa issued is believed to have cost around $6,000.</p>
<p>Since the story was made public, some arrests have been made and some alleged members of the gang have gone on the run. Nevertheless, questions remain about how the scheme was able to operate undetected for so long.</p>
Economics, Global Politics, Business, Finance & Economics, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/fake-us-embassy-operated-10-years-ghanaWed, 07 Dec 2016 11:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldFor years, Ghana had two US embassies. One is in an imposing, modern building, surrounded by wide lawns and palm trees. The other was a small office building, covered in peeling paint.A vendor sells images of President Barack Obama in Accra, Ghana. The fake US Embassy in Accra is believed to have operated for as long as ten years. A vendor sells images of President Barack Obama in Accra, Ghana. The fake US Embassy in Accra is believed to have operated for as long as ten years.
[field_credit]Charts: Crime is getting even worse in post-Olympics Riohttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/charts-crime-getting-even-worse-post-olympics-rio
<p>During the Summer Olympic Games, Rio de Janeiro deployed 85,000 troops and police officers to watch over the tourists and athletes who flooded into the city. For a little while it resembled a military takeover, with clusters of armed soldiers every few blocks.</p>
<p>But now, those troops are gone. Not just that, but <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-01/three-months-after-olympics-rio-de-janeiro-broke">Rio’s city and state administrations are broke</a>. The cops who remain are receiving their salaries in late installments because the authorities can’t afford to pay them on time.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, violence and crime keep are getting worse. Recent clashes between police and drug traffickers in the city’s impoverished <em>favela</em> neighborhoods have resulted in dozens of shootings. Last month, a police helicopter crashed in the gritty City of God favela, killing four officers.</p>
<p>And now, new official statistics from Rio’s Public Security Institute show that the city is, indeed, facing a severe surge in crime from just last year.</p>
<p>We’ve put together three charts that illustrate some of the most shocking numbers.</p>
<h3>1. Street robberies are up 48 percent from last year</h3>
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<p>From January to October, there were over 30,000 more robberies reported in Rio than in the first 10 months of 2015 — a whopping 48 percent increase.</p>
<p>As Brazil’s economy craters, Rio has been hit especially hard. The city and state once had a booming oil industry, but thousands of jobs have been lost following the meltdown of the state oil company, Petrobras, which is caught in a massive corruption scandal.</p>
<p>Drug gangs are also making a forceful return to the favelas, leading to a rise in everything from petty crime to murders, says Silvia Ramos, a sociologist at the Center for Security and Citizenship Studies at Rio’s Candido Mendes University.</p>
<p>Ramos says a “pacification” program, that sent thousands of military police to “invade” and set up permanent commands in the favelas, has proved a comprehensive failure.</p>
<p>“There’s no doubt at this point that we are living in a situation where the drug bosses are coming back and we’re seeing a big increase in violent and other crime that is very similar to what we had before the UPPs,” Ramos says, using the Portuguese initials for the police occupation.</p>
<h3>2. Deadly assaults are way up — that includes police-involved killing</h3>
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<p>In the first 10 months of 2016, crimes involving deadly force — including deliberate killing, "bodily injury followed by death" and "homicide resulting from opposing police intervention" (literal translations from the Portuguese crime labels) — jumped 21 percent compared with the same period in 2015.</p>
<p>Ramos says this is almost certainly a result of the breakdown of the pacification program. As narco-traffickers become more confident and reclaim their old territory, Rio is regressing to the bad old days of turf wars between rival gangs and fierce police pursuits of drug bosses inside the favelas.</p>
<p>“What is pretty much dead at this point is the whole idea of ‘pacification,’” Ramos says. “The idea that if you put a permanent presence in the favela, you won’t have a permanent presence of traffickers using weapons of war.”</p>
<h3>3. Homicides are up 18 percent</h3>
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<p>Rio de Janeiro recorded more than 600 more homicides in the first 10 months of 2016 than it did in the same period last year, an increase of 18 percent.</p>
<p>To put Rio’s murder numbers in perspective, let’s compare it to Chicago, where gun violence and murder have grabbed lots of attention lately. Chicago had 474 murders in the first eight months of 2016, a shocking 50 percent increase from last year.</p>
<p>Rio, with about double the population of Chicago, had 3,649 murders in that time period, almost eight times as many.</p>
Conflict, Justice, Conflict & Justicehttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/charts-crime-getting-even-worse-post-olympics-rioWed, 07 Dec 2016 11:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostGlobalPostRio de Janeiro's Olympics security force is gone — and robberies and violent crime are rising. Here's how bad it is, in three charts.Residents gather round the bodies of suspected drug traffickers in the City of God favela in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 20.
[field_credit]China has climate change deniers, too. But they’re mostly shunned.http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/china-has-climate-change-deniers-too-they-re-mostly-shunned
<p>It’s official. The next White House, according to Donald Trump’s chief of staff, is likely to treat climate change as a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-climate-change-denial-white-house-reince-priebus-steve-bannon-a7446236.html">“bunch of bunk.”</a></p>
<p>This would, of course, require a radical rejection of scientific fact. Almost <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php">every nation</a> on earth now vows — on paper, at least — to try to halt cataclysmic climate change. Even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/08/north-korea-war-climate-paris-deforestation">North Korea</a> is on board.</p>
<p>But under Trump, the US executive branch may stand alone in embracing <a href="http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/">deeply discredited</a> views on climate.</p>
<p>This could bring severe consequences. There is almost no way to reverse climate change without the cooperation of at least two very powerful nations.</p>
<p>One is the United States, far and away the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countries-responsible-climate-change">biggest carbon dioxide emitter</a> in human history, and currently the second-biggest offender. The other is China, the top emitter.</p>
<p>Only one of these countries is in thrall to climate change deniers. But what about the other key player in this crisis: the Communist Party of China?</p>
<p>Are there also climate change skeptics within Chinese officialdom?</p>
<p>Almost assuredly, says John Chung-En Liu, a sociologist with Occidental College in California. But they’re marginalized, he says, and know better than to openly spout their fringe views.</p>
<p>“No higher-up Chinese officials have publicly said, ‘It’s a hoax,’” Liu says. “But it’s possible some hold that view and just won’t say it.”</p>
<p>The party line is that China’s leadership takes climate change threats very seriously and must <a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-03/07/content_23775918.htm">rapidly veer</a> toward renewable energy. The party is loathe to see minor officials muddling up this message.</p>
<p>“Everything the Chinese government does on climate change is heavily scrutinized internationally,” Liu says. “They’re extremely careful with the image they present.”</p>
<p>In other words, an official could be harshly punished for undermining the party position. But there is a significant undercurrent, Liu says, that views climate change as a Western plot to undercut China’s rise.</p>
<p>This phenomenon, which Liu has studied for several years, does not dominate political thought. Still, a growing body of Chinese-language books and online screeds depict the nation as duped by a Western-led climate regime.</p>
<p>One such book, “The Empire of Carbon Brokers,” says that “one day in the future, we will discover that the planet is not getting any warmer, but colder … we will also realize that we are already tightly controlled by the United States, becoming their new slaves.”</p>
<p>Liu also cites a popular online video by Larry Hsien Ping Lang, a US-educated economist and provocative commentator. His views are indicative of Chinese-style climate change denial.</p>
<p>The weather “is obviously getting colder and colder,” Lang says, “but they are still lying through their teeth.”</p>
<p>“These foreign bastards are so worried that China will rise and surpass the United States … The scientists are all puppets controlled by politics. Copenhagen liars! American liars!”</p>
<p>Top officials will never speak this way, Liu says. “But statistically speaking, there must be a group — among the hardcore left wing — that has similar views.”</p>
<p>Unlike in America, climate change skepticism in China is largely a left-wing notion. It flourishes among hyper-nationalist circles with a Cold War outlook, Liu says. They see America as “an imperial, colonial power they must fight against,” he says. “They’re still stuck in that mentality.”</p>
<p>If China had a US-style political system, in which outside corporate lobbyists wield immense power, such sentiments might be <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-republicans-still-reject-the-science-of-global-warming-w448023">nurtured</a> among the political class — namely by a private energy sector fearful of profit-sapping carbon taxes.</p>
<p>But in China, the energy sector is largely state operated and must conform to official policy. And that policy, enshrined in China’s latest <a href="http://www.wri.org/blog/2016/03/5-questions-what-does-chinas-new-five-year-plan-mean-climate-action">five-year plan</a>, is ambitiously green.</p>
<p>China already generates <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-02/by-the-numbers-china-s-clean-energy-investments-show-big-strides">four times</a> as much clean power as does the United States. The party is also mindful that it has lots of work to do. Much of China’s environment is a disaster. Millions of Chinese are sick of choking on smog and drinking from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/22/black-smelly-citizens-clean-chinas-polluted-rivers">foul-smelling rivers.</a></p>
<p>Moreover, Trump’s climate change denial is a weakness that Beijing knows it can exploit. State-run papers are <a href="http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1020145.shtml">already crowing</a> that the US will “betray its words” on climate change while “China will unswervingly keep its promise.”</p>
<p>“China now sees itself as moving into a better position to win this race,” Liu says. “They want to emerge as a new force, a new leader, on climate action.”</p>
<p>With an incoming White House eager to abandon the race altogether, that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/donald-trump-success-helps-china-emerge-as-global-climate-leader">lead position</a> is more obtainable than ever.</p>
<p>The Communist Party’s small band of climate change skeptics may chatter in the shadows. But Beijing’s powerful elite would never allow a small fringe in their ranks to sabotage one of their prime goals: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/china-dream-liu-mingfu-power/394748/">outshining the United States</a> in the 21st century.</p>
Economics, Global Politics, Election 2016, Environment, Business, Finance & Economics, Politics, Science, Tech & Environmenthttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-07/china-has-climate-change-deniers-too-they-re-mostly-shunnedWed, 07 Dec 2016 09:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostGlobalPostUnlike in America, climate change skepticism in China is largely a left-wing notion.China's national flag is seen in front of the chimney of a cogeneration plant in Beijing, Nov. 7, 2014.
[field_credit]A North Dakota blizzard hits the Standing Rock protest camp hardhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/north-dakota-blizzard-hits-standing-rock-protest-camp-hard
<p>Protesters at the Standing Rock Camp in North Dakota spent Sunday evening celebrating: The Army Corps of Engineers said it wouldn't give permission for the Dakota Access Pipeline to run under the Missouri River.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Celebrations were cut short, though, when a ferocious blizzard rolled into the area, with wind gusts up to 50 mph and wind chills near 20 below zero. The camp itself was buried in snow drifts as high as 7 feet.</p>
<p dir="ltr"></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_on_left"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/carscrashed.jpg?itok=s-advdmd" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Several roads leading in and out of Standing Rock have been blocked, and there's been numerous accidents.</p>
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</div>North Dakota weather is notoriously difficult, but such an early storm is unusual. Dianne Bachmeier, a lifelong resident of Flasher, right by Standing Rock, owns an inn in town. She says she’s been seeing people seeking refuge from the weather — several campers trying to find a warm place to stay.
<p dir="ltr">But many protesters are still at the camp. That includes Nakota Nation veteran Brandi King, who says people are still happy about Sunday's news — but remain skeptical. The Army Corps' announcement was met with resistance from Energy Transfer Partners, the company building it. There was also harsh political criticism.</p>
<p dir="ltr">King herself doesn't plan to leave.</p>
<p dir="ltr">"We celebrated that victory, and it was a small victory. I think a lot of people misunderstood that this meant the pipeline is over with. So now there are several people who are basically like, 'OK, we're not going to leave until we see those DAPL security lights removed from the hill.' Until we see action, and it's confirmed, I don't think people are going to leave," she says. </p>
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<p>Many Standing Rock protestors sought refuge in neighboring towns.</p>
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<p dir="ltr">King is from Montana and is used to winters this harsh: Her job at the camp is to get people prepared for the long, cold months ahead. Earlier this week, though, leaders of the Sioux Nation asked non-Sioux to leave the camp, for their own safety. “We’re thankful for everyone who joined this cause and stood with us. The people who are supporting us ... they can return home and enjoy this winter with their families. Same with law enforcement.”</p>
<p>But right now leaving is a challenge: Several major roads leading to the camp were closed as of Tuesday afternoon.</p>
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<p>Campers cook in a tent</p>
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<p dir="ltr">For the time being, those who came with smaller, more precarious tents have abandoned them — staying in old school buses, motorhomes, tee pees and dome-like yurts. There are supplies, donated food and water, and firewood.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A collection of Army surplus tents with heating stoves have been serving as kitchens, dining halls and most importantly right now, a medical clinic. There was even a box of long underwear for those who didn’t bring enough layers. In addition, flyers posted around the camp, even inside the portable toilets, listed the signs of hypothermia.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The storm has shut down 300 miles of North Dakota interstate highway. It's forecast to end Tuesday evening, but icy roads and gusty winds will continue to make travel difficult.</p>
Conflict, Development, Environment, Conflict & Justice, Development & Education, Science, Tech & Environmenthttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/north-dakota-blizzard-hits-standing-rock-protest-camp-hardTue, 06 Dec 2016 18:15:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldFollowing Sunday evening's victory — winning postponement of the Dakota Access Pipeline — the Standing Rock protest camp was battered by a strong blizzard. Standing Rock Camp and the surrounding area was pumelled by a massive blizzard on Monday. Standing Rock Camp and the surrounding area was pumelled by a massive blizzard on Monday.
[field_credit]This teen is creating the first Afghan, wheelchair-bound superherohttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/teen-creating-first-afghan-wheelchair-bound-superhero
<p dir="ltr">Mohammad Sayed is unstoppable. At the age of 19, he is already an inventor and entrepreneur. One half of his business, called RimPower, is providing assistive technologies. The other half is a comic book series centered around the hero Wheelchair Man.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“My goal is to help people in wheelchair[s] both psychologically and physically,” he says. “A world where every wheelchair user is empowered rather than disabled."</p>
<p dir="ltr">Sayed, who goes by "Mo," knows firsthand what that’s all about. At age 5, he suffered a traumatic spinal cord injury when his home in Afghanistan was bombed. It happened only days after he lost his mother to cancer. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, his father took him to a hospital in Kabul and never returned.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Basically, I was on my own,” he says.</p>
<p dir="ltr">He spent seven years in a trauma hospital because he had nowhere else to go. To survive, he became a hustler, wheeling around the ward working odd jobs — repairing staffers' cellphones and taking pictures for photo IDs. He even taught himself English by listening to the BBC — and charged for translation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“It was the uncertainty of ‘if this hospital closes, you have no place to go.’ So, you gotta act like you are no different than anybody who lives here. I think I just never gave up,” Sayed says.</p>
<p dir="ltr">He never gave up. Even when the hospital staff eventually had to evacuate, leaving him alone with just a few guards.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“The first month was really tough for me. I missed people because I would interact with patients, with nurses, with doctors,” Sayed says. “And all of a sudden, the place was like a ghost town. And I was the only living soul in it.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">His luck would change six months later, when Maria Pia-Sanchez, an American nurse working in Afghanistan, came looking for him. A doctor who knew Sayed asked her to check on him.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“So we stopped by the hospital where he had been living to see if anyone was there and if they knew where he was,” Pia-Sanchez says. “Just he and a couple of guards and a cleaner [were there].”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Even though Sayed was so young, Pia-Sanchez says he was entrusted with many things in the hospital that the older staff were not.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“He was given the keys to the pharmacy when they had to leave quickly because they trusted him to keep all that stuff safe. He was an amazing kid from everything that I had heard, so in a way it didn’t surprise me.”</p>
<p dir="ltr"></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="675" width="900" alt="Mo and his Mom" title="Mo and his Mom" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Moh%20and%20Mom%20Second%20meeting_0.JPG?itok=8JDpBcku" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Mohammad Sayed and Maria Pia-Sanchez in Afghanistan.</p>
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<p>Courtesy of Mohammad Sayed</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Pia-Sanchez ended up adopting Sayed. And two years later, he moved to the US — with $600 of his earnings in his pocket, as he likes to point out. His new life in the suburbs of Boston came with a secure home and a mother who cooked and took care of him. But he didn't leave everything he'd learned behind.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Even though that life has ended for me, you know, you will never feel certain,” the teenager says. “These are the kinds of things that stay with you. But what defines us as humans is that some of us don’t give in.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">His idea of not giving in started to shift when he learned about Mahatma Gandhi. That was his introduction to using non-violence as a weapon, and the whole concept blew his mind.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Before learning about Gandhi, my role models were warlords,” Sayed says. “And I said I wish I had my legs so I could go kill these bastards — the Taliban.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Those warlords were replaced with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. But in the pantheon of heroes, there was still a piece missing. And it wasn’t until Sayed attended Comic-Con in Boston a couple years ago that everything came into full focus.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Most superheroes that come out is all about action and violence and at the end everything is destroyed and the hero becomes a hero because he destroyed everything,” Sayed says. “It’s like, what is the message you are sending to young kids?”</p>
<p dir="ltr">There’s a bit of a swagger to Sayed. His thick black eyebrows frame eyes that have a playful gleam. You can’t help but think that he is always one step ahead of you.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“So at Boston Comic-Con, I was like, why is there nobody representing the wheelchair community? Why isn’t there a wheelchair superhero wheeling around here?”</p>
<p dir="ltr"></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="1165" width="900" alt="Wheelchair Man" title="Wheelchair Man" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Wheelchair%20Man.jpg?itok=waqEswSs" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Wheelchair Man</p>
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<p>Courtesy of Mohammad Sayed</p>
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<p dir="ltr">So he set out to make Wheelchair Man, an Afghan-American superhero who, upon making eye contact, shows a would-be criminal the consequences of his actions before he commits them. That’s his power. Throw in a wheelchair that can travel at warp speed with amphibious capabilities, and you’ve got yourself a pretty badass comic book hero. But what makes Wheelchair Man truly unique is that he’s based on a true story — Sayed’s story.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“In Afghanistan we don’t have superheroes, so this is a first. Especially, a first that is based on an Afghan-American. So I think a lot of kids in Afghanistan, when they read this, and they know about this story, it will really impact them,” he says.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Sayed has already completed a draft of the first edition of Wheelchair Man. He’s <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/2r65vtwc" target="_blank">raising money</a> with the crowd-sourcing website GoFundMe. His goal is to get copies of it into hospitals and rehab centers all over the world. He also has plans to build out a franchise that includes characters Captain Afghanistan, Wheelchair Boy and Wheelchair Girl.</p>
<div dir="ltr">If his basement workshop is any indication, his plan doesn’t stop there. Downstairs, a wheelchair hangs suspended from pulleys. He’s building a full-scale prototype of Wheelchair Man’s wheelchair. Behind it is a neon green wall — a green screen that Sayed painted himself. He’s already thinking about movies and videogames.</div>
<p dir="ltr">“I tell you, I don’t want to scare Marvel, but if we have the right investors and right amount of money, we could compete. We have original ideas, original superheroes, it’s very different," he says. "Some people say different is bad but in this time and in this situation we are now, everyone needs hope and everyone wants peace and everyone around the world can relate to them.”</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AmgzqgJUD10?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
Books, Culture, Development, Arts, Culture & Media, Development & Educationhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/teen-creating-first-afghan-wheelchair-bound-superheroTue, 06 Dec 2016 17:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldA young man who learned to survive in the harshest conditions now dreams of helping disabled kids the world over.Mohammad SayedMohammad Sayed in his workshop.
[field_credit]Three Somali journalists on Lesbos hope for the best — asylum in Europehttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/three-somali-journalists-lesbos-hope-best-asylum-europe
<p>Journalists aren’t allowed inside Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. So, I probably never would have met Kamal Hassan if it hadn’t been for the fire.</p>
<p>In September, refugees protesting the deplorable conditions in the camp <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-09-20/refugees-lose-little-they-have-left-lesbos-detention-center-blaze" target="_blank">set much of it ablaze</a>. The 4,000 people living inside were forced to evacuate to the road outside the gates.</p>
<p>I was in the midst of the chaotic crowd with some other reporters when someone tapped me on the shoulder. A young man with friendly dark eyes introduced himself as Kamal Hassan. He told me he was a journalist from Somalia. He and two other Somali journalists had come to Greece to seek asylum, he said, because they have each been targeted by the extremist group, al-Shabab, in Mogadishu.</p>
<p>But now they were stuck in Moria. And he urgently wanted to tell me their story.</p>
<p>Several days later, I returned to the camp, where Hassan introduced me to Yassin Abuukar and Kowthar Adraman.</p>
<p>The three journalists eagerly showed me their press IDs from Somali media outlets — Kalsan TV, Horn Cable TV and Radio, TV Mantaa and others. They were all under 30 and had been working as journalists in the Somali capital since their late teens. They had all been attacked by al-Shabab multiple times, they said. Their lives were in danger, so they had fled Somalia and come to Greece in hopes of getting asylum in Europe.</p>
<p>Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis make up the majority of the refugee population of 16,000 currently stuck on Lesbos and other Greek islands; African refugees are often overlooked. But in addition to the Somalis, Moria contains migrants from Sudan, Eritrea, Ghana, Congo, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Mali, The Gambia and Uganda. Their desire is to gain permanent status as refugees or economic migrants in some European country — but their chances are slim.</p>
<p>Adraman is only 21. She says she's also the only female Somali journalist to have built and run her own news website — <a href="http://kowtharmedia.com" target="_blank">Kowtharmedia.com</a>, complete with her own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMpBRPhTkgM" target="_blank">theme song</a>.</p>
<p>Working as a journalist in Somalia since she was 16 has made Adraman tough. Al-Shabab is known for targeting journalists in their homes, so to protect herself and her family, she lived in a safe house with other female journalists for the last five years. She would only see her mother once or twice a year.</p>
<p>“Now [I'm fleeing] Somalia but before I left I had already had to flee from my family to keep them safe,” she said.</p>
<p>But these precautions haven’t shielded her from frequent death threats from al-Shabab by phone and text. She narrowly escaped injury in two bombing incidents, one at a cafe and one at a hotel in Mogadishu.</p>
<div>She left Somalia because she feared her time was running out.</div>
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<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_on_left"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/IMG_5049.jpg?itok=YPllOsp6" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Kamal Hassan, Yassin Abuukar and Kowthar Adraman are pictured here at Moria refugee camp.</p>
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<p>Jeanne Carstensen</p>
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<p>Somalia is one of the <a href="https://rsf.org/en/somalia" target="_blank">most dangerous places</a> in the world to be a journalist. A failed state where extremists and criminal gangs operate with impunity, the country is ranked near the very bottom of the Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index.</p>
<p>The Committee to Protect Journalists ranks the country No. 1 on its <a href="https://cpj.org/reports/2016/10/impunity-index-getting-away-with-murder-killed-justice.php" target="_blank">Global Impunity Index</a>, because so many journalists there are threatened and killed.</p>
<p>“Somalia is extremely dangerous for anyone who conveys an opinion or a message that does not conform to the people with the guns,” said journalist Murithi Mutiga, the Guardian’s correspondent in Nairobi and the East Africa representative for CPJ.</p>
<p>Hassan was also threatened by al-Shabab. Like Adraman, he couldn’t live at home. But one day, on a rare occasion when he was trying to visit his mother, he noticed suspicious men following him. They fired at him as he ran. He wasn’t injured, but it was the last straw. He fled Somalia for Turkey, where he paid a smuggler to cross by dinghy to Greece.</p>
<p>In the boat, Hassan met Yassin Abuukar.</p>
<p>Abuukar’s troubles started in 2008 when al-Shabab kidnapped him after he refused to work for their media outlet, Radio Koran. He was freed eventually, after his family paid a ransom. Later, he was captured again. He managed to escape the night before he was told he would be executed.</p>
<p>In 2012, he narrowly escaped death again, <a href="https://rsf.org/en/news/another-journalist-gunned-down-day-after-three-killed-suicide-bombing" target="_blank">targeted by militants</a> in Mogadishu while he was working alongside prominent journalist Hassan Absuge. Abuukar got away; Absuge was murdered. Then last year, al-Shabab bombed the house where Abuukar’s wife and child were living. Abuukar wasn’t there, but his wife was injured, and his baby boy was killed. </p>
<p>That’s when he decided to flee Somalia for good.</p>
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<p>Abuukar, Hassan and Adraman hope to return to their country one day and continue working as journalists. Until then, their dream is to make it to London, which has a thriving Somali media scene. It’s unlikely, though, that anyone here other than Syrians will be granted asylum. </p>
<p>For now, the journalists are stranded in Moria awaiting their asylum hearings. Under the European Union-Turkey deal on migrants, they can’t leave the island until their cases are decided. They may face eventual deportation back to Turkey, deemed a safe third country for migrants, but a place they can’t work legally. In Somalia, they would face certain danger.</p>
<p>In spite of all the unknowns, Adraman’s ambitions haven’t flagged a bit. When she can get a good internet connection at the camp, she still manages to update her website with video reports from other Somali journalists. “I need to tell my people everything that’s going on in the world,” she said. “I want my website to be famous.”</p>
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<div><em>Jeanne Carstensen's reporting in Greece was supported by the <a href="http://pulitzercenter.org/" target="_blank">Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting</a>.</em></div>
Media, Conflict, Global Politics, Arts, Culture & Media, Conflict & Justice, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/three-somali-journalists-lesbos-hope-best-asylum-europeTue, 06 Dec 2016 17:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldSyrians, Afghans and Iraqis make up the majority of the refugee population stuck on Lesbos and other Greek islands. So the Africans there to seek asylum are often overlooked.Somali journalists Kamal Hassan and Yassin Abuukar sit at a canteen outside Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece.
[field_credit]To fight hate crimes, philanthropist George Soros's organization begins by tracking themhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fight-hate-crimes-philanthropist-george-soross-organization-begins-tracking-them
<p>The spike of hate incidents from coast to coast in recent weeks is alarming. In the 10 days following the election of Donald Trump, the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded more than 800 real-world incidents — and that doesn’t even begin to include instances of online harassment.</p>
<p>George Soros, the Holocaust survivor and billionaire philanthropist, wants to track — and combat — this increase in hate incidents. Last month, he announced he would donate $10 million to fight hate crimes nationwide.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Soros's organization, <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/">the Open Society Foundations</a>, will be splitting the funds into three different buckets. Amardeep Singh, the program officer for the National Security and Human Rights Campaign at the Open Society Foundations, says the first thing they'll do with the money is document incidents of hate crimes — to draw society’s attention to the scale and scope of the problem. Second, they’ll provide legal support to victims. And third, they plan to crowdsource solutions to hate crimes from community groups — pledging to accept and consider ideas in just two weeks. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Singh and his team believe it is better to rely on marginalized communities to see and report on hate crimes themselves, rather than waiting for the federal government to intervene.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Because the federal system is so weak when it comes to recording hate incidents, it’s been left to community groups to do this,” explains Singh. “[The Open Society Foundations are] going to be supporting community groups not only with collecting incidents, which they already do, but most importantly with aggregating them across communities, so that Latino, Black, Muslim, Arab, South Asian, transgender and LGBTQ folks are collecting data collectively, and making that information public and searchable by incident type, geography and type of discrimination." </p>
<p dir="ltr">Singh says this sort of reporting has never been done before, but, he points out, the timing has never been more crucial. "This moment allows for it, because anyone who is not straight, white or male has been a target," he says. "Though that’s painful, it gives us an opportunity to work across communities.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">By reporting incidents of hate crimes and aggregating them into a searchable database, Singh hopes people will finally be able to see just how bad this situation has become. He also believes deniers will finally realize how painful and pervasive these incidents are.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“I have a lot of faith that once people see the stories of, for example, the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/muslim-woman-new-york-city-pushed-down-stairs-subway-called-terrorist/">Muslim woman who was pushed</a> down the stairs of a New York City subway, or hear the story of the transgender activist in Appalachia who is being harassed post-election, or hear about the Latino children who are being told they shouldn’t come to school anymore because they’re going to be deported soon — that those are the stories that will carry the day,” says Singh.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Singh and his team also note that their boss, Soros (who has received quite a bit of criticism from Trump and his supporters for being too influential in liberal politics) has enough personal experience with hate crimes to know when it’s something he should put his money behind.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“The imperative to act fast comes straight from George Soros himself. He experienced the Holocaust and experienced what it was like when people speak up, but speak up too late.”</p>
Justice, Election 2016, Conflict & Justice, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fight-hate-crimes-philanthropist-george-soross-organization-begins-tracking-themTue, 06 Dec 2016 16:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldBillionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor will invest $10 million to help communities track hate crimes against them. Business magnate George Soros arrives to speak at the Open Russia Club in London.
[field_credit]To fight hate crimes, philanthropist George Soros's organization begins by tracking themhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fight-hate-crimes-philanthropist-george-soross-organization-begins-tracking-them
<p>The spike of hate incidents from coast to coast in recent weeks is alarming. In the 10 days following the election of Donald Trump, the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded more than 800 real-world incidents — and that doesn’t even begin to include instances of online harassment.</p>
<p>George Soros, the Holocaust survivor and billionaire philanthropist, wants to track — and combat — this increase in hate incidents. Last month, he announced he would donate $10 million to fight hate crimes nationwide.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Soros's organization, <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/">the Open Society Foundations</a>, will be splitting the funds into three different buckets. Amardeep Singh, the program officer for the National Security and Human Rights Campaign at the Open Society Foundations, says the first thing they'll do with the money is document incidents of hate crimes — to draw society’s attention to the scale and scope of the problem. Second, they’ll provide legal support to victims. And third, they plan to crowdsource solutions to hate crimes from community groups — pledging to accept and consider ideas in just two weeks. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Singh and his team believe it is better to rely on marginalized communities to see and report on hate crimes themselves, rather than waiting for the federal government to intervene.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Because the federal system is so weak when it comes to recording hate incidents, it’s been left to community groups to do this,” explains Singh. “[The Open Society Foundations are] going to be supporting community groups not only with collecting incidents, which they already do, but most importantly with aggregating them across communities, so that Latino, Black, Muslim, Arab, South Asian, transgender and LGBTQ folks are collecting data collectively, and making that information public and searchable by incident type, geography and type of discrimination." </p>
<p dir="ltr">Singh says this sort of reporting has never been done before, but, he points out, the timing has never been more crucial. "This moment allows for it, because anyone who is not straight, white or male has been a target," he says. "Though that’s painful, it gives us an opportunity to work across communities.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">By reporting incidents of hate crimes and aggregating them into a searchable database, Singh hopes people will finally be able to see just how bad this situation has become. He also believes deniers will finally realize how painful and pervasive these incidents are.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“I have a lot of faith that once people see the stories of, for example, the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/muslim-woman-new-york-city-pushed-down-stairs-subway-called-terrorist/">Muslim woman who was pushed</a> down the stairs of a New York City subway, or hear the story of the transgender activist in Appalachia who is being harassed post-election, or hear about the Latino children who are being told they shouldn’t come to school anymore because they’re going to be deported soon — that those are the stories that will carry the day,” says Singh.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Singh and his team also note that their boss, Soros (who has received quite a bit of criticism from Trump and his supporters for being too influential in liberal politics) has enough personal experience with hate crimes to know when it’s something he should put his money behind.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“The imperative to act fast comes straight from George Soros himself. He experienced the Holocaust and experienced what it was like when people speak up, but speak up too late.”</p>
Justice, Election 2016, Conflict & Justice, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fight-hate-crimes-philanthropist-george-soross-organization-begins-tracking-themTue, 06 Dec 2016 16:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldBillionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor will invest $10 million to help communities track hate crimes against them. Business magnate George Soros arrives to speak at the Open Russia Club in London.
[field_credit]A program that pays African migrants to leave Israel is breaking up familieshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/israeli-program-pay-african-migrants-leave-voluntarily-breaking-families-leaving
<p>The Israeli government offers cash and free flights to African asylum seekers who agree to return home or fly to other African countries — an incentive to get them to leave. The measure is bringing down the number of African migrants in Israel, currently about 45,000.</p>
<p>But an inadvertent effect of this policy is that some African men — hoping to get smuggled to Europe — are abandoning their families in Israel to claim the government cash. </p>
<p>In Tel Aviv, Brkitay Gebru, a 29-year-old Eritrean asylum seeker, says her husband disappeared in February. She believes he flew to Africa with Israeli help.</p>
<p>Now Gebru is working long hours as a cleaner to support two energetic boys who wonder when their father is coming home.</p>
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<p>Brkitay Gebru, an Eritrean asylum seeker, is raising sons in Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood, home to many recently arrived immigrants. Gebru believes her husband took advantage of an Israeli program to provide cash grants and free flights to migrants and asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan who agree to return to Africa. “I’m very angry that he left Israel. It’s very hard, especially with the children.”</p>
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<p>Tariki Gebru, 4, looks in the mirror in a small room he shares with his mother and younger brother in the Shapiro neighborhood of Tel Aviv. His father abandoned the family and went back to Africa, leaving his mother to care for her two young sons.</p>
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<p>Brkitay Gebru wakes every morning at dawn to care for her children.</p>
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<p>Brkitay Gebru holds photos of her sister and mother. She hasn't seen them since 2010, when she left Eritrea and undertook the dangerous journey to Israel through Egypt’s Sinai desert. She is among more than 60,000 Eritreans and Sudanese asylum seekers who entered Israel in the last decade, fleeing military dictatorships and genocide.</p>
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<p>Tariki Gebru, 4, speaks with a neighbor, Ethiopian Israeli Mazal Kfyalew. She immigrated to Israel in the 1990s and sells ingera, the traditional flatbread she often brings to Gebru and her sons. She says she pities them, living in such difficult circumstances.</p>
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<p>Brkitay Gebru prays at an Eritrean Church, one of many in an immigrant neighborhood of Tel Aviv. “Many women have no husbands. They go to Africa, they go to Sudan, they go to Ethiopia ... without women,” explained Father Ignatios Aragawi.</p>
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<p>Boys gather outside an Eritrean Church in Shapira, an immigrant neighborhood of Tel Aviv.</p>
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<p>Brkitay Gebru escorts her son Tarik, 4, to kindergarten. Each morning, she wakes early because she must prepare and take her sons to school before heading to her job as a janitor — a one-hour bus ride from home.</p>
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<p>Tariki Gebru, 4, who attends a municipal kindergarten catering to Tel Aviv's immigrant children, completes his first task of the day. He struggles, but finally finds his name in Hebrew from a stack of names and places it in the "boys" column on a felt board.</p>
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Economics, Global Politics, Business, Finance & Economics, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/israeli-program-pay-african-migrants-leave-voluntarily-breaking-families-leavingTue, 06 Dec 2016 16:15:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldAn incentive from the Israeli government offers money and free flights to African asylum seekers, if they agree to return to Africa. But, there's a problem with this immigration policy: some African men instead use the money to try to get to Europe, leaving their families behind.Brkitay Gebru stands with her sons, Tariki, 4, and Natanael, 3, in the courtyard of their building where immigrants from Eritrea and other countries rent rooms in Tel Aviv. She works as a janitor in order to make ends meet. “It’s hard. 4,000, 5,000 shekels ($1,000-$1,300) is what I earn. The house is 2,000 shekels ($520), and there’s food and after-school care for the children. It’s not enough.”
[field_credit]How a Lebanese immigrant helped pave the way for the study of Islam and Muslim culture in the UShttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/how-lebanese-immigrant-helped-pave-way-study-islam-and-muslim-culture-us
<p>By 2020, every high school student in California’s public and charter schools will be able to take at least one ethnic studies class.</p>
<p>It’s thanks to a bill that California state Rep. Luis Alejo and the California Latino Legislative Caucus. In doing so, they joined the ranks of educators, students, activists and elected officials who have pushed for courses that better reflect <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-17/if-things-keep-going-they-are-100-years-teachers-still-wont-be-diverse-their">America’s changing demographics</a>.</p>
<p><em><strong>More about ethnic studies: </strong><a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/california-will-soon-provide-ethnic-studies-classes-all-high-schoolers-heres-why">California will soon provide ethnic studies classes for all high schoolers. Here's why.</a></em></p>
<p>It’s not a new movement. At the height of the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, coalitions like the Third World Liberation Front argued for universities to introduce more courses on non-European histories and cultures, create better opportunities and services for students of color, and increase hiring of non-white faculty. Their efforts led to the country’s first College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University in 1969, and spurred the rise of ethnic studies programs across the country.</p>
<p>Yet the roots of the struggle to make the education system in the United States more inclusive along lines of race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality go back earlier than the 1960s. One man — an immigrant who first came to the United States from Lebanon in 1913 — helped pave the way for greater diversity in American academics by pioneering the study of Islam in the United States. And it was all thanks to a broken arm.</p>
<p>Or at least that’s how Philip Khuri Hitti tells the story in his unpublished memoir, tucked away in his collection of personal and professional records that the Hitti family donated to the University of Minnesota’s <a href="http://cla.umn.edu/ihrc/ihrc-archives">Immigration History Research Center Archives</a>.</p>
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<p>If you were to stack all of the boxes of material in Hitti’s archival collection at the University of Minnesota, it would reach two stories high. In addition to being a prolific scholar and educator, Hitti was a collector of visual materials documenting Arabic culture — including this 1930 image of an astrolabe.</p>
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<p>Courtesy of the Philip Khuri Hitti Papers, Immigration History Research Center Archives, University of Minnesota</p>
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</div>The story goes like this: When he was eight years old, Hitti and his brother walked a donkey from their hometown of Shemlan, Lebanon, to a neighboring village. Their father sent them there to pick up a sack of flour. Their father gave them an order, too: Do not ride the donkey.
<p>Naturally, Hitti and his brother jumped onto the donkey as soon as they were out of their dad’s line of sight.</p>
<p>The fun and games lasted until the trio crossed paths with another donkey, throwing theirs into a stir, braying and jumping until the two boys fell to the ground. His brother was fine. Hitti, however, was not. The fall sent his bone through the skin of his right arm.</p>
<p>Hitti’s mother usually took care of the family’s medical needs. Repairing a compound fracture, however, was outside her skills. Village elders offered a range of remedies; one woman bent Hitti’s broken arm at the elbow and exposed it to steam rising from a brew of weeds and leaves. Hitti fainted. When he awoke, his wound remained.</p>
<p>Around that time, a graduate of the school of medicine at the Syrian Protestant College — known today as the American University of Beirut — was traveling through Shemlan and heard that a local boy required medical attention. His prognosis: Hitti’s arm had developed gangrene. He had to choose between death or the hospital.</p>
<p>After two surgeries and several months in recovery at a hospital about 15 miles away in Beirut, Hitti’s family held a meeting. Their prognosis: “Such a boy cannot make his living here; send him away to school.”</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="627" width="900" alt="black and white photo of a street corner with sign in Arabic and French: &quot;Rue du Dr. Philip Hitti&quot; " class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Street.jpg?itok=Y92bEoVZ" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>A street in Beirut named for Hitti commemorates his achievements.</p>
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<p>Courtesy of the Philip Khuri Hitti Papers, Immigration History Research Center Archives, University of Minnesota</p>
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<p>Hitti had spent his earliest years as a student taking classes under an oak tree in the yard of his village’s church, and ended up in high school only as a side effect of a boyhood injury. College, he wrote, was “no nearer than the moon in pre-space days.”</p>
<p>But he excelled and, eventually, attended Syrian Protestant College just like the student who sent him to the hospital.</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Hitti remembered being able to see the main building of Beirut’s Syria Protestant College from his home in Shemlan. Here’s what the school, now the American University of Beirut, looks like today.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/66543362@N00/9691111395/">marviikad/Flickr</a> (CC BY-SA 2.0)</p>
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</div>He not only graduated from college, but also received an invitation from his alma mater’s president to represent Lebanese students at a conference in Nohonk, New York.
<p>Hitti arrived in the US in 1913 and ultimately finished his Ph.D. at Columbia University in the summer of 1914. World War I temporarily interrupted his plans to return to Lebanon after graduating.</p>
<p>Hitti couldn’t help but feel out of place during his stint in wartime America. As far as he knew, he was the first “Near Easterner” to pursue a doctoral degree in the US. When he spoke with Americans who learned that the Lebanon he called home wasn’t in Pennsylvania or New Hampshire, but was a country on the other side of the world, Hitti felt like “a fossil on exhibit from some bygone age.”</p>
<p>He did return to Lebanon, though, in 1920 as a professor of Oriental history at the renamed American University of Beirut. A few years later, Princeton received a surge in funding for the study of the Middle East. One Princeton graduate left behind enough money to support scholarships and a library in the “ancient Oriental field.” Another donated enough Arabic books and manuscripts to start the <a href="http://rbsc.princeton.edu/collections/robert-garrett-collection-syriac-manuscripts">Robert Garrett collection</a>, which Hitti described as “one of the richest, if not the richest, of its kind connected with any university in the West or East.” In February 1926, Hitti returned to the US as an assistant professor of Semitic literature at Princeton.</p>
<p>Princeton may have had resources. But Hitti was perturbed by the university’s lack of coursework on Islam — the curriculum only offered classes that taught Islam as it related to Christianity and Judaism. As for language, Hitti explained there were no classes at Princeton or anywhere else in the US that focused on “Arabic for its own sake, as a carrier of a major world culture and as a key to one of the richest literatures.”</p>
<p>The courses Hitti taught were literally locked away in the ivory tower. When he first started teaching, the university tucked his classes away on the library’s edges, right next to patrons strolling the stacks and searching for books.</p>
<p>“The more I became aware of this giant blind spot in the American curriculum,” Hitti wrote, “the more I was determined to find a remedy for it.”</p>
<p>Hitti went to work. In addition to creating graduate courses in Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages, Hitti and the colleagues he recruited taught courses on the literature, history, religion, economics, sociology, politics and arts of the Near East.</p>
<p>When he tried to convince university administrators about “the merits of Islamic Studies,” Hitti remembered feeling like “Americans had inherited from Europeans a measure of political and religious prejudice against Islam.”</p>
<p>It took 20 years, but in the mid-1940s Hitti founded and became the first director of Princeton University’s Program in Near Eastern Studies.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197104/a.talk.with.philip.hitti.htm">1971 interview in “Saudi Aramco World,”</a> Hitti said that the deployment of Allied troops to North Africa and western Asia in World War II set the stage for increased interest in Middle Eastern studies — including in the US government, which began sending soldiers to Princeton so they could study Arabic. Tensions between Palestine and the emerging nation-state of Israel also played a key role in generating the financial and political support necessary for his program to get off the ground. Oil companies like Aramco and private philanthropic organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, motivated by geopolitical maneuvering in the Middle East, helped foot the bill for Princeton’s Near Eastern Studies program.</p>
<p><em><strong>Also:</strong> <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-04/more-american-apple-pie-muslims-have-been-migrating-us-centuries">More American than apple pie, Muslims have been migrating to the US for centuries</a></em></p>
<p>Hitti played a major role in laying the foundation for the academic study of the Middle East in the US. But his legacy is not unproblematic. When discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict, he challenged Israel’s right to the land by suggesting their claim “had no more validity than a claim by Indians to the United States.” Scholar John Tofik Karam argued in an article in the “International Journal of Middle East Studies,” meanwhile, that Hitti’s role in helping create a program in Near Eastern studies owed too much to American political and military interests.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, nearly 40 years after his death in 1978, Hitti’s work to create more room for non-Eurocentric curriculum in American education is an important note in the ongoing struggle for ethnic and area studies in the US.</p>
<p>The Princeton program Hitti founded continues today. In addition, in March 2016, students and faculty gathered to protest budget cuts that <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/03/iconic-ethnic-studies-college-san-francisco-state-says-it-cant-pay-its-bills">threatened to undercut San Francisco’s College of Ethnic Studies</a>.</p>
Education, Development & Educationhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/how-lebanese-immigrant-helped-pave-way-study-islam-and-muslim-culture-usTue, 06 Dec 2016 14:15:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldIt wasn’t so long ago when US colleges and universities dismissed Islam as a serious subject of study. A broken arm set off the chain of events that sent Philip Khuri Hitti from Lebanon to Princeton, where he created the first program in Near Eastern Studies in the US.
Philip K. Hitti, pictured at his desk at Princeton University in 1949. Hitti migrated to the US from Lebanon in 1913 and eventually helped create the first Near Eastern Studies program in the country.
[field_credit]Fidel Castro's capitalist legacy: the tracksuithttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fidel-castros-capitalist-legacy-tracksuit
<p>The classic image we have of the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro is that of a bearded man in military fatigues — the uniform of revolution. But in his later years, Castro donned another outfit: the retiree tracksuit.</p>
<p>Castro did officially retire from Cuba's presidency in 2006 — though he continued to heavily influence the island nation's leadership — putting his brother Raul in power, where he remains to this day.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Long-lost photos of Fidel Castro's 1959 visit to New York <a href="https://t.co/MNd1Nb6N4C">https://t.co/MNd1Nb6N4C</a> <a href="https://t.co/RBgWzyGBzC">pic.twitter.com/RBgWzyGBzC</a></p>
<p>— PRI's The World (@pritheworld) <a href="https://twitter.com/pritheworld/status/804617591973146624">December 2, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>But a curious fact about his retirement outfit of choice is that the Western Hemisphere's longest-ruling communist leader was sporting some of the most globally recognizable capitalist brands: Nike, FILA and Adidas.</p>
<p>What's more, he wore one of them to his meeting with Pope Francis last year. (Castro's revolution long eschewed all religion.)</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">regardless what you think of fidel castro, we can all agree that he did in fact meet with the pope while wearing an adidas tracksuit <a href="https://t.co/sb7jAbp0d9">pic.twitter.com/sb7jAbp0d9</a></p>
<p>— alex wennerberg (@alexwennerberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/alexwennerberg/status/802641366048276480">November 26, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p>The Castro tracksuit has become sort of a thing.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Need a castro tracksuit</p>
<p>— No more rap debates. (@DamnItCarlos) <a href="https://twitter.com/DamnItCarlos/status/805635050016477184">December 5, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p>A German edition of French satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo, recently published a cartoon of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who's governed for 11 years and is running for re-election, wearing a Castro tracksuit.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">This one made me laugh: the new German edition of Charlie Hebdo has Merkel in a Castro-style Adidas tracksuit with a 50-year term <a href="https://t.co/umCFqJVrTo">pic.twitter.com/umCFqJVrTo</a></p>
<p>— Deborah Cole (@doberah) <a href="https://twitter.com/doberah/status/804272097535098880">December 1, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://qz.com/847016/fidel-castros-death-a-life-in-tracksuits/">Quartz published a whole thing</a> about Castro's habit of wearing these tracksuits to meetings with foreign dignitaries. For his 90th birthday, Castro donned the tracksuit of the Algerian soccer team.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/inabster">@inabster</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Fam_0812Idf">@Fam_0812Idf</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/kallmane">@kallmane</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/FatMothay">@FatMothay</a> Castro celebrates his 90 years with a tracksuit of the team of Algeria <a href="https://t.co/XADQZ1DVsh">https://t.co/XADQZ1DVsh</a></p>
<p>— Azzdean (@Azzdean) <a href="https://twitter.com/Azzdean/status/764801904014663680">August 14, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p>But he also rocked the Team Cuba tracksuit — <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/fidel-castro-adidas?utm_term=.jcyvOg6wG6#.xc9DM3jEaj" target="_blank">created by Adidas</a> for Cuba's Olympic team. Communism!</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Here’s why Fidel Castro wears so many Adidas tracksuits <a href="https://t.co/ubLVIKwrtr">https://t.co/ubLVIKwrtr</a> <a href="https://t.co/Zrtjceey0S">pic.twitter.com/Zrtjceey0S</a></p>
<p>— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) <a href="https://twitter.com/BuzzFeed/status/735483433300922369">May 25, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
Culture, Economics, Lifestyle, Arts, Culture & Media, Business, Finance & Economics, Lifestyle & Beliefhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fidel-castros-capitalist-legacy-tracksuitTue, 06 Dec 2016 12:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldThe Western Hemisphere's longest-ruling communist leader loved wearing some of the world's best-known brands.Pope Francis (L) and former Cuban President Fidel Castro (in a tracksuit) share a laugh in Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 20, 2015.
[field_credit]Fidel Castro's capitalist legacy: the tracksuithttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fidel-castros-capitalist-legacy-tracksuit
<p>The classic image we have of the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro is that of a bearded man in military fatigues — the uniform of revolution. But in his later years, Castro donned another outfit: the retiree tracksuit.</p>
<p>Castro did officially retire from Cuba's presidency in 2006 — though he continued to heavily influence the island nation's leadership — putting his brother Raul in power, where he remains to this day.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Long-lost photos of Fidel Castro's 1959 visit to New York <a href="https://t.co/MNd1Nb6N4C">https://t.co/MNd1Nb6N4C</a> <a href="https://t.co/RBgWzyGBzC">pic.twitter.com/RBgWzyGBzC</a></p>
<p>— PRI's The World (@pritheworld) <a href="https://twitter.com/pritheworld/status/804617591973146624">December 2, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>But a curious fact about his retirement outfit of choice is that the Western Hemisphere's longest-ruling communist leader was sporting some of the most globally recognizable capitalist brands: Nike, FILA and Adidas.</p>
<p>What's more, he wore one of them to his meeting with Pope Francis last year. (Castro's revolution long eschewed all religion.)</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">regardless what you think of fidel castro, we can all agree that he did in fact meet with the pope while wearing an adidas tracksuit <a href="https://t.co/sb7jAbp0d9">pic.twitter.com/sb7jAbp0d9</a></p>
<p>— alex wennerberg (@alexwennerberg) <a href="https://twitter.com/alexwennerberg/status/802641366048276480">November 26, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p>The Castro tracksuit has become sort of a thing.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Need a castro tracksuit</p>
<p>— No more rap debates. (@DamnItCarlos) <a href="https://twitter.com/DamnItCarlos/status/805635050016477184">December 5, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p>A German edition of French satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo, recently published a cartoon of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who's governed for 11 years and is running for re-election, wearing a Castro tracksuit.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">This one made me laugh: the new German edition of Charlie Hebdo has Merkel in a Castro-style Adidas tracksuit with a 50-year term <a href="https://t.co/umCFqJVrTo">pic.twitter.com/umCFqJVrTo</a></p>
<p>— Deborah Cole (@doberah) <a href="https://twitter.com/doberah/status/804272097535098880">December 1, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://qz.com/847016/fidel-castros-death-a-life-in-tracksuits/">Quartz published a whole thing</a> about Castro's habit of wearing these tracksuits to meetings with foreign dignitaries. For his 90th birthday, Castro donned the tracksuit of the Algerian soccer team.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/inabster">@inabster</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Fam_0812Idf">@Fam_0812Idf</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/kallmane">@kallmane</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/FatMothay">@FatMothay</a> Castro celebrates his 90 years with a tracksuit of the team of Algeria <a href="https://t.co/XADQZ1DVsh">https://t.co/XADQZ1DVsh</a></p>
<p>— Azzdean (@Azzdean) <a href="https://twitter.com/Azzdean/status/764801904014663680">August 14, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<p>But he also rocked the Team Cuba tracksuit — <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/bradesposito/fidel-castro-adidas?utm_term=.jcyvOg6wG6#.xc9DM3jEaj" target="_blank">created by Adidas</a> for Cuba's Olympic team. Communism!</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">Here’s why Fidel Castro wears so many Adidas tracksuits <a href="https://t.co/ubLVIKwrtr">https://t.co/ubLVIKwrtr</a> <a href="https://t.co/Zrtjceey0S">pic.twitter.com/Zrtjceey0S</a></p>
<p>— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) <a href="https://twitter.com/BuzzFeed/status/735483433300922369">May 25, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
Culture, Economics, Lifestyle, Arts, Culture & Media, Business, Finance & Economics, Lifestyle & Beliefhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/fidel-castros-capitalist-legacy-tracksuitTue, 06 Dec 2016 12:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldThe Western Hemisphere's longest-ruling communist leader loved wearing some of the world's best-known brands.Pope Francis (L) and former Cuban President Fidel Castro (in a tracksuit) share a laugh in Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 20, 2015.
[field_credit]California will soon provide ethnic studies classes for all high schoolers. Here's why.http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/california-will-soon-provide-ethnic-studies-classes-all-high-schoolers-heres-why
<p>In a second-floor classroom at San Francisco’s Washington High School, David Ko is leading freshmen in a discussion about bullying. But it’s not the typical conversation about treating others nicely.</p>
<p>“We’re learning about power — political, economic, social — our race, ethnicity, culture, nationality,” says 14-year-old freshman James Liu.</p>
<p>That’s because ethnic studies is not simply a history course detailing the achievements of members of different racial groups; the curriculum is conscious of and sometimes analytical about how race and ethnicity are intertwined with power.</p>
<p>Earlier this fall, California Governor Jerry Brown <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/california-governor-signs-bill-develop-high-school-ethnic-studies-curriculum-n648396">signed into law a bill that will, by 2019, create an ethnic studies program</a> for all of the state’s public high schools. Three similar bills failed in recent years, over lack of funding or concerns that they would create additional red tape.</p>
<p>Ko’s class, which he describes as a good representation of Washington High’s diversity — 64 percent Asian, 13 percent Hispanic, 8 percent white and 5 percent African American — engages in weighty and sometimes personal discussions. Earlier this year, for example, they had a conversation about changing their school’s name because its namesake, George Washington, was a slave owner.</p>
<p>“Some students got very emotionally charged and moved by it,” says Ko. “We were able to have that discussion and at the end of the class period no one was calling anyone names, there weren’t grudges held, people didn’t throw any punches.”</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_on_left"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Ethnic%20Studies-3.jpg?itok=Y2gP_XJQ" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Washington High School teacher David Ko talks to students in his 9th grade ethnic studies class.</p>
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<p>Classes like this one are taught at almost all of San Francisco Unified’s 19 high schools. Washington was one of the first campuses to offer ethnic studies in a pilot program, beginning eight years ago. Two years ago, San Francisco expanded the program across the city.</p>
<p>Now a committee of teachers, professors, community members and students will spend the next two years developing an ethnic studies curriculum that will be taught across the state. It’s not as simple as replicating San Francisco Unified’s lessons. In San Francisco, ethnic studies is a ninth grade class that includes the histories of minority groups — including Black, Latino and Asian Americans — as well as curriculum about how race may affect power and opportunity. In other schools, such as in Los Angeles, courses might be focused on one topic, such as African American history or Mexican American literature. Currently, 20 California school districts already teach ethnic studies or are in discussions to add them.</p>
<p>San Francisco’s courses may be a good example of what other classes in California may look like, although organizers want to leave enough flexibility to tailor the lessons to the needs in different parts of the state. R. Tolteka Cuauhtin teaches ethnic studies at the Social Justice Humanitas Academy, a high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Cuauhtin is also part of <a href="http://www.ethnicstudiesnow.com">Ethnic Studies Now</a>, a coalition of teachers and professors which pushed for the statewide change.</p>
<p>“How can we ensure that it is not diluted, made uncritical, and devoid of what it really needs to be transformational for students?” asks Cuauhtin. “Just carrying the name ‘ethnic studies’ isn’t enough for it to produce the transformational results that it’s been demonstrated to be capable of.”</p>
<p>Ethnic studies programs have been at the center of controversies in other states. <a href="http://archive.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130311arizona-ethnic-studies-ban-ruling.html">Arizona banned ethnic studies in 2010</a>; critics said that the curriculum encouraged the overthrow of the US government and promoted resentment towards certain groups. In November, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2016/11/16/state-board-education-rejects-mexican-american-stu/">the Texas State Board of Education rejected a Mexican American studies textbook</a>, which <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/14/493766128/texas-textbook-called-out-as-racist-against-mexican-americans">many scholars said was inaccurate</a> or worse, racist.</p>
<p><strong><em>Also: </em></strong><em><a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-09-02/us-classrooms-are-becoming-unlikely-immigration-battleground">US classrooms are becoming an unlikely immigration battleground</a></em></p>
<p>A study released earlier this year by Stanford University shows that <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w21865">ethnic studies classes have many long-term benefits for students</a>, including fewer absences, higher grades and even better graduation rates. Those improvements were especially pronounced among boys and Hispanic students. San Francisco Unified intentionally made ethnic studies a freshman course with the aim of impacting students early, and keeping them in school.</p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="600" width="900" alt="Man in front of his classroom, which has different languages on posters" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Ethnic%20Studies-4.jpg?itok=ZBJeBlyp" title="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Washington High School Ethnic Studies teacher David Ko in his classroom.</p>
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<p>“If the class is only available to seniors, there would be some students in the ninth grade who are not at Washington or perhaps even in school by the time they get to be seniors,” says Ko, who himself is a 2000 graduate of Washington High. “This was the kind of class that I really would have benefitted from.”</p>
<p>In his sixth period ethnic studies class, Ko describes a scenario about a person getting bullied, then standing up for himself. He asks the class what type of racism this qualifies as. Students start yelling out answers. A quiet 14-year-old named Mariana Marin lifts her hand, offering an answer: “Interpersonal?”</p>
<p>When I ask her after class if she likes school, Mariana answers, “No, but this is the exception, I guess.”</p>
<p>Other students in the class tell me over and over that they’ve learned things that help them understand their world.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know that both of my parents came here 25 years ago,” says 13-year-old Yoni Fisseha, the son of Ethiopian immigrants. “They told me that when I was writing my essay for this class.”</p>
<p>Students and teachers of ethnic studies in California say the courses are not meant for one specific group, but to better understand intersectionality — how factors such as race, class and gender may overlap and add up, creating an uneven playing field for marginalized groups.</p>
<p>“I think it’s for everyone,” says 14-year-old Ethan Elejorde. “It’s for everyone to learn about each other.”</p>
<p><em><strong>History:</strong> <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/how-lebanese-immigrant-helped-pave-way-study-islam-and-muslim-culture-us">How a Lebanese immigrant helped pave the way for ethnic studies</a></em></p>
<p>And now, in this post-election climate — <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20161128/trump-effect-impact-2016-presidential-election-our-nations-schools">teachers surveyed by the Southern Poverty Law Center</a> overwhelmingly say harassment, hate and anxiety have increased in classrooms — ethnic studies organizers have faith that California can lead the way in a better understanding of race and its role in society.</p>
<p>“We remain resolute,” says Cuauhtin.</p>
<p>There are still details to work out with the state education commission in charge of curriculum: how will the programs will be funded and will the classes be required for graduation? In the meantime, Cuauhtin and a group of other high school teachers, college faculty and community members will continue to develop the ethnic studies lessons, which could be in schools as soon as 2020.</p>
<p><em>2014-2015 was the first school year when students of color outnumbered white students in public kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms. <a href="http://www.pri.org/collections/global-nation-education">Here are more stories about the evolution of education in America</a>.</em></p>
Education, Development & Educationhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-06/california-will-soon-provide-ethnic-studies-classes-all-high-schoolers-heres-whyTue, 06 Dec 2016 12:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldA Stanford study says providing high school students with ethnic studies courses may help them stay in school and stay engaged. California has passed a law to make them available at all high schools in the state.Freshmen Yoni Fisseha (left) and Ethan Elejorde in class at Washington High School in San Francisco. Fisseha says he didn’t know about his parents’ immigration story until he had to complete an assignment in their ethnic studies class.
[field_credit]Refugees in Pennsylvania keep musical traditions alive with kids' songshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/refugees-pennsylvania-keep-musical-traditions-alive-kids-songs
<p>Marta Sam is surrounded by really energetic 4-year-olds. She’s at St. Martin’s Day Care in Erie, Pennsylvania, guiding the kids as they sing and dance.</p>
<p>Sam sings in Arabic, then English. She takes the students through a Congolese song, followed by "Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed." The kids follow her cues, dancing and calling out their favorite songs. Sam is used to this.</p>
<p>“When they see me in the classroom they say, 'Miss Marta can we do this? Miss Marta can we sing this? Miss Marta can we jump?'" she says. "Yeah, I will jump with them and get silly like them — working with the kids you just get down in their level and just ... mess with them."</p>
<p>Sam, 59, is a roving educator at St. Martin's Day Care. She goes from room to room and sings lullabies from all over the world with the kids. Originally from South Sudan, she came to Erie 13 years ago as part of the first wave of thousands of refugees who have resettled in this small Rust Belt city.</p>
<p>She worked at a plastics factory and started learning English. Then she heard she could get job training to work in day cares. In return she’d share the traditional songs she had sung to her children when they were young.</p>
<p>It was just what she needed.</p>
<p>“Oh, it changed my life very much. ... I’m somebody now,” she says.</p>
<p>Sam works at St. Martin’s because of <a href="http://erieartmuseum.org/old-songs-new-opportunities/">Old Songs, New Opportunities</a>, a program dreamed up by Kelly Armor, a folklorist and educator at the Erie Art Museum. Armor is from Erie, but spent time in the '80s studying traditional song in Kenya and Tanzania. When she noticed refugees settling in Erie in recent years, she had an idea.</p>
<p>“Could it be that ... there are refugee women that are, would love to work with small children? And could it be that they know lots of songs and they know how to use songs with kids?” she wondered.</p>
<p>It turned out they did, and in some cases the songs were all they bought to the US. That was the case for Victoria Angelo, who is also from South Sudan.</p>
<p>“I was not able to bring anything. No dishes, nothing, no [clothing],” she says. “What I actually brought with me was the songs.”</p>
<p>But in some ways the songs represented everything that was missing.</p>
<p>“It's just expressing our feelings, our happiness, our sadness, the war going on, expressing the season, when there is heavy rain, when there is drought,” she says. </p>
<p></p><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><img height="599" width="900" alt="Victoria Angelo" title="Victoria Angelo" class="media-element file-default" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/DSC02005.JPG?itok=aPAZVYe8" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Victoria Angelo and some of the toddlers she works with. </p>
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<p>Armor, the folklorist, got funding to train women like Angelo and Sam so they could get jobs in child care. Then, just as she had done in Africa, she collected and translated their songs.</p>
<p>Combining job training and musical tradition has been so successful, the museum released a CD. Angelo sings some of the songs, like the one from the Acholi people that is sung when a child begins to toddle.</p>
<p>“It is a way to call the child to toddle to you and then you sing to that child to turn around and then somebody else sings to that child,” explains Armor.</p>
<p>In the United States, some of the most popular children’s songs already come from overseas — think "London Bridge Is Falling Down" or "Ring Around The Rosie." But every country and culture has these types of songs, and with migration and assimilation, they can be lost — or gained.</p>
<p>Armor has archived nearly a hundred songs from almost as many countries and cultures. They're about everything — animals, emotions, experiences.</p>
<p>One Nepalese song is about climbing mango trees at recess to pick ripe fruit.</p>
<p>“But at the end of the song the bell rings and you don’t get the mango," she says. "I think of that as kind of, well there you go, there’s an eternal truth. Recess will never be long enough. And sometimes you don’t get time to eat that mango."</p>
<p><em>Here is a selection of the songs from the CD "<a href="http://Simba La La: World Music for Children">Simba La La: World Music for Children</a>," courtesy of the Erie Art Museum:</em></p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PXdlHhifSyY?rel=0" width="853"></iframe></p>
<p>This song is about the green fly, an insect found in South Asia. It lovingly describes the fly and then proclaims the fly is better when its outside.</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lyk4mDGP_2A?rel=0" width="853"></iframe></p>
<p>When Congolese children sing this, they flap their hands on either side of their head.</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T70CVZap_GU?rel=0" width="853"></iframe></p>
<p>This song is similar to "I’m A Little Teapot."</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wubEw2DgpvU?rel=0" width="853"></iframe></p>
<p>The English translation of this song uses locations in Erie that the children will recognize. </p>
Culture, Music, Education, Global Politics, Lifestyle, Arts, Culture & Media, Development & Education, Politics, Lifestyle & Beliefhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/refugees-pennsylvania-keep-musical-traditions-alive-kids-songsMon, 05 Dec 2016 15:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldA folklorist at the Erie Art Museum dreamed up the idea: Helping refugees gain work skills while working with them to preserve their songs.Marta Sam sings with a classroom of four-year-olds.
[field_credit]Protesters at Standing Rock celebrate an unexpected victoryhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/protesters-standing-rock-celebrate-unexpected-victory
<p dir="ltr" id="m_2176778214007362058docs-internal-guid-6db167a8-cfc1-ad02-cfc8-cd66c086b628">By now, you've probably heard <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-04/us-army-corps-engineers-hands-victory-dakota-access-pipeline-protesters">the news out of North Dakota</a>. </p>
<p dir="ltr">After many months of protests — and with tensions mounting — the Army Corp of Engineers announced the Dakota Access Pipeline would not, for now at least, be able to pass through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Native American groups and environmental activists have opposed the construction on Native and sacred lands. At the heart of it all: the Missouri River. The massive pipeline was supposed to go through it, but activists feared that it could contaminate the water supply. They began calling themselves the "water protectors.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">A tipping point came a few days ago, when several thousand US military veterans arrived at the camp, saying they would serve as "human shields" in front of the protesters. Most of the veterans were Native. According to a 2010 census, there are more than 150,000 Native veterans.</p>
<p dir="ltr"></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_on_left"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/Screen%20Shot%202016-12-05%20at%2012.48.58%20PM.png?itok=7tFTMx-t" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>John Shirley, a Navajo veteran who fought in the first Iraq war, arrived in Standing Rock last week to serve as a “human shield.”</p>
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</div>When they arrived at the camp, the mood was grim. A heavy blanket of snow had turned to ice and muddy sludge. An arctic cold front was predicted to move through in the coming days. A deadline loomed large: The Army Corps of Engineers had ordered several thousand protestors to take down and evacuate a tent city they had built. Monday was, in fact, going to be their last day.
<p dir="ltr">The very first man I met upon arriving at the camp was a Navajo vet, named John Shirley. "I’m here to be, basically, a human shield," he explained.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Shirley is a veteran of the first Iraq War. He came from Arizona to guard the protesters. I met him at the entrance to the sprawling camp, where, in recent weeks, protesters have clashed with National Guard soldiers and local police. And that’s when veterans like Shirley decided to come help people. To be that human shield.</p>
<p dir="ltr">To "stand there, close my eyes, and take whatever comes at me. As long as I can block and deflect whatever it may be ... you know, that’s the way we was trained," he says.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Like many veterans, he felt outraged at the way protesters were being treated by police. And he was also frustrated that Native lands and resources could be endangered by the pipeline. "I never thought I would be doing this on American soil," he says. "Protecting the American people from their own government. I never thought that would happen, you know?"</p>
<p dir="ltr">Several thousand veterans felt the same way, pouring into the camp over the weekend. At a meeting Saturday night, in a warehouse outside Standing Rock, veterans were instructed to be nonviolent. Sage burned while men and women in uniform received marching orders: "We will not instigate." They were told to spread the orders among themselves. No direct confrontation, and nothing that could harm the cause.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At that warehouse, there was a sense the pipeline was inevitable. By the next afternoon, they found out that wasn't the case.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At the camp, Brandi King, a Nakota veteran of Iraq, said nonviolence is a challenging order for a warrior. "Fighting for peace is a lot harder than — I mean anyone can pull a trigger. ... Actually being peaceful, and fighting for that — <em>that</em> takes a warrior. It takes a strong person to be peaceful."</p>
<p dir="ltr"></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_on_left"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn1.pri.org/sites/default/files/styles/original_image/public/brandi.jpg?itok=ez4_v1qv" alt="" /><div class="field-caption">
<p>Brandi King, a Nakota veteran who served in the Iraq war, has been at the Standing Rock camp on and off for several months.</p>
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</div>We chatted with King right outside her teepee. She’s stocky, and she has a rough demeanor with a melancholy, heavy-lidded gaze. She grew up on a Montana reservation and only left to join the military. She served for eight years.
<p dir="ltr">"That’s all I grew to know. Learning how to fight."</p>
<p dir="ltr">She returned from Iraq with severe PTSD. "I wanted to take my life. I tried to take my life."</p>
<p dir="ltr">She came home to a system that wasn’t prepared to cope with women vets like her.</p>
<p dir="ltr">"They weren’t prepared for the amount of women who were combat veterans, who were going to be coming in with wounds and with PTSD."</p>
<p dir="ltr">King said after 10 years of not knowing what to do with herself, she finally began to heal at Standing Rock. "This — seeing people together, seeing people support each other, that provides healing for me. Seeing my indigenous brothers and sisters being able to stand up with pride, provides a healing for me."</p>
<p dir="ltr">But it still wasn’t an easy decision, to come, knowing she might have to face off with soldiers on the other side of this fight. At the end of the day, she figured, "if I was willing to die for this government, I was willing to die for this country. I was willing to die for every single person here ... then give me some peace. Allow me to live for my ancestors. Allow me to create a better path for the ones who are coming. For my nieces and nephews, for the unborn. Let me be a part of that."</p>
<p dir="ltr">She prayed on it. That prayer was answered Sunday afternoon. The air was absolutely frigid, and under a crisp blue sky, the announcement came: The Army Corps of Engineers, for now, would not give permission for the pipeline to go under the Missouri River.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Shortly after hearing the news, I went to find King. She was right outside her teepee, away from the crowd.</p>
<p dir="ltr">"You pray to experience this, but when it actually happens — I don’t know. I can’t come up with the words right now," she said, amidst tears of joy. "There wasn’t any violence. There wasn't any weapons. To feel that spiritual reinforcement— from all of those who fought in Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan. All of those that brought everything that they had, everything that they took to every battle. Every battleground. But this was the spiritual battleground."</p>
<p dir="ltr">The crowd around her roared and erupted in song. King, meanwhile, was speechless.</p>
Conflict, Justice, Development, Conflict & Justice, Development & Educationhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/protesters-standing-rock-celebrate-unexpected-victoryMon, 05 Dec 2016 14:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldMonths of protest in North Dakota came to a head over the weekend — and not at all in the way people were expecting. But they're beyond thrilled with the decision.Guess which city has the strictest Airbnb lawshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/guess-which-city-has-strictest-airbnb-laws
<p>There's a showdown in Europe that involves housing.</p>
<p>Simply put: There's a shortage of affordable places to live. Especially places to rent.</p>
<p>Residents put some of the blame for that on home-sharing websites like Airbnb. They say these sites allow landlords to fill their apartments with lucrative short-term rentals instead of more affordable long-term ones.</p>
<p>Authorities in Germany's capital, Berlin, decided to do something about that. They've enacted a law that slaps stiff regulations on Airbnb and similar companies. “What it hopes to accomplish is to stop private apartments from being flushed out of the permanent rental markets and being used entirely for tourist accommodation,” says Feargus O'Sullivan, for <a href="http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/12/berlin-has-the-worlds-toughest-anti-airbnb-laws-are-they-working/509024/">the Atlantic's City Lab project</a>. “The idea of the law is to make it difficult or impossible to exploit that sector at the expense of ordinary Berliners.”</p>
<p>O’Sullivan reports that you can still rent out up to half of the home you live in. But if you run afoul of the law, you could be fined up to $106,000. He covers this in detail in his story.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">The city with the world's toughest anti-Airbnb laws <a href="https://t.co/NneZoe2FdP">https://t.co/NneZoe2FdP</a> <a href="https://t.co/7vtD4AO6yc">pic.twitter.com/7vtD4AO6yc</a></p>
<p>— CityLab (@CityLab) <a href="https://twitter.com/CityLab/status/805195062720208897">December 3, 2016</a></p></blockquote>
<script async="" src="http://www.pri.org//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>The biggest question, however, is whether the new law works. “It’s too early to tell,” says O'Sullivan.</p>
<p>It certainly hasn’t stopped the vacation rentals in Berlin. A quick search on Airbnb shows plenty of spaces to stay. </p>
Business, Business, Finance & Economicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/guess-which-city-has-strictest-airbnb-lawsMon, 05 Dec 2016 14:00:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldThis European city has some of the harshest Airbnb laws on the books. But it doesn't seem to stop the flow of people renting out their apartments. Apartment buildings are seen here, at Kantstrasse street in Berlin's Charlottenburg district, on March 17, 2016.
[field_credit]The European Union may be fragile, but it's not cracking up just yethttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/european-union-may-be-fragile-its-not-cracking-just-yet
<p>You could be forgiven for thinking Europe is coming undone these days.</p>
<p>First there was Brexit, when British voters chose to leave the European Union. And there's been the rise of parties opposed to European integration in several countries including France, the Netherlands and Germany.</p>
<p>This past weekend, voters in Italy rejected changes in their constitution, turning against their pro-EU leader Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. He has announced his resignation.</p>
<p>But the EU still has a lot of life in it, says Richard Parker, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. Parker says the vote in Italy was not a full-out rejection of the EU.</p>
<p>"It wasn't quite as simple as a populist vote," Parker says. "We need to look at it as a sign that this crisis of legitimacy that is haunting not just European but Western governments is ongoing. But this is not a final blow and the end of Western civilization as we know it, or even the EU as we've known it." </p>
<p>Bucking the nationalist trend in Europe, voters in Austria this weekend rejected the candidacy of Norbert Hofer, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party founded in the 1950s by former Nazis. Instead, Austrians gave the nod to former Green Party leader Alexander Van der Bellen.</p>
<p>Still Parker admits that the power of Europe's older, center-left parties that had relied on the support of unions and white collar professionals has clearly eroded. </p>
<p>"They have lost narrative coherence for their voters," Parker says, noting that those traditional parties could no longer slide by on telling their constituents a story of post-war economic recovery and political democratization. The European Union, he points out, is less than fully democratic and economic inequality is on the rise. </p>
<p>"That goes to the heart of what is both the European problem and also the American problem," he adds.</p>
<p>Ultimately though, Parker sees a future for the EU and says the US should promote European cohesion even more than it has in past decades, especially given the shift of global economic power toward China and other Asian nations.</p>
<p>"We want a unified and strong Europe on our side negotiating changes, rather than a fragmented Europe in which no one country is larger than the California economy and therefore can be easily picked off or separated out like sheep from a flock," he says.</p>
<p>The incoming administration of Donald Trump has suggested it may oppose a unified Europe. But Parker isn't taking those statements on face value.</p>
<p>"Others around the secretary of the treasury and certainly Janet Yellen and the [Federal Reserve] will be quite vigorous and noisy about warning President Trump that to push Europe toward further dissolution is to risk the deepest of American political and geo-economic interests," Parker says.</p>
Economics, Global Politics, Business, Finance & Economics, Politicshttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/european-union-may-be-fragile-its-not-cracking-just-yetMon, 05 Dec 2016 13:30:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldItalian voters gave a thumbs down to constitutional reform that would have strengthened a pro-EU leader. But voters in Austria reject a far-right candidate.Supporters of Austrian far right Freedom Party (FPOe) presidential candidate Norbert Hofer hold masks with Hofer's face during the 'FPOe Summer Party' in Vienna, Austria, September 6, 2016. REUTERS/Leonhard FoegerSupporters of Austrian far right Freedom Party (FPOe) presidential candidate Norbert Hofer hold images of his face in Vienna, Austria.
[field_credit]A French take on affirmative action relies on geography, not race http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/french-take-affirmative-action-relies-geography-not-race
<p>The odds were stacked against Mamadou Sissoko arriving at Sciences Politiques, better known as Sciences Po, one of France’s most elite universities. He was born in Mali, and at the age of 7, moved to a Paris immigrant suburb. It’s a place where people don’t talk much about the highest echelon of the country’s higher-education system.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know what <a>Sciences Po</a> was,” Sissoko says, “until my last year of high school.”</p>
<p>He entered the highly selective institution through an unusual admissions program, known by the acronym CEP, designed to expand access to disadvantaged students.</p>
<p>The pioneering model was introduced at Sciences Po in 2001. And it takes a different approach to widening opportunities — one based on the very French approach to geography.</p>
<p>To get into Sciences Po, students typically have to pass a written entrance exam and make a presentation to a juried panel. The CEP program introduces an alternative entry process for students from about 100 specially chosen high schools in state-determined priority education zones, based on factors including income and educational success rates.</p>
<p>These districts are largely located in lower-income suburban and rural areas.</p>
<p>In Sissoko’s case, instead of taking the written exam, he prepared a research project in his final year of high school — he chose to write about the Chinese stock market crisis of 2015 — before presenting two separate oral presentations.</p>
<p>In August, he began classes in Sciences Po’s satellite campus in Reims, outside Paris, located in a former Jesuit school for boys that was built in the 16th century.</p>
<h3><strong>An alternative to American-style “affirmative action”</strong></h3>
<p>The program was born from the observation that low-income students were underrepresented at France’s most selective universities, says Hâkim Hallouch, director of equal opportunities and diversity programs at Sciences Po. Hallouch was part of the first CEP class of 2001 and now oversees the program for the university.</p>
<p>CEP was inspired by the American model of affirmative action, but its structure was informed by French ideas about egalitarianism and racial and ethnic differences.</p>
<p>Singling out students based on their personal characteristics was out of the question, says Sciences Po sociologist Agnes van Zanten, a researcher who focuses on education and inequality.</p>
<p>“In the French Constitution, [it’s] written there shouldn't be any kind of discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity,” van Zanten says. “That’s the idea that even positive discrimination is a form of discrimination.”</p>
<p>She says there was language on the CEP website early on highlighting the encouragement of greater racial and ethnic diversity in the student body, but it rapidly disappeared.</p>
<p>“The idea was not to put too much emphasis on affirmative action,” she says, which “would have given way to a very heated debate.”</p>
<p>Still, the program wasn’t without controversy or comparisons to the American system.</p>
<p>There is an archived video online of a <a href="http://www.ina.fr/video/2683911001028">televised debate that Hallouch took part in</a>, in 2004, while still a student, with classmate Laurent Manjole, who insisted the CEP program introduced “a policy of quotas” in French higher education that would be “contrary to all French tradition.”</p>
<p>According to Sciences Po, there is no set quota for CEP students each year. Around 1,600 students have been admitted since 2001.</p>
<p>There are still student groups who argue the CEP program lowers the value of a Sciences Po diploma, but first-year CEP student, Sirine Bidjou, believes “It’s part of the mentality now, the fact that Sciences Po opens its doors to students from working-class neighborhoods.”</p>
<p>She and a number of other CEP students say they prefer the path they followed over American-style affirmative action.</p>
<p>“[Affirmative action is] much more stigmatizing than targeting geography,” says Hanifa Benrahou.</p>
<p>But it turns out that while geography can be a useful proxy, it’s not a perfect indicator for combating inequality.</p>
<p>“We have observed,” says van Zanten, “that the people who have been profiting from the [CEP] policy are not necessarily those most in need.” She says about 40 percent of students who come to Sciences Po through these partnerships are not from lower-class backgrounds.</p>
<p>Poverty, she notes, is less concentrated in France than in many US neighborhoods, so CEP can have the effect of disproportionately benefiting the higher-income students in these disadvantaged high schools.</p>
<p>It has actually had a more substantial impact, she believes, in terms of increasing ethnic diversity, particularly the number of students from immigrant backgrounds. These young people, she said, often have higher educational aspirations. </p>
<h3><strong>Representing diversity in a rarefied setting</strong></h3>
<p>Anais Khaldi, who entered through CEP, and is now pursuing a master's degree at Sciences Po, was initially nonplussed to find herself considered a “minority” student. In the exceptionally diverse Paris suburb where she grew up, she had considered herself integrated into French society, despite her North African background.</p>
<p>“You have a hard time figuring out what's your place,” she says of Sciences Po, “because you're questioned a lot about, ‘Yeah, but you came here just by affirmative action — do you think you could get in if it wasn't by this specific program?'”</p>
<p>She says the relative lack of means of some students from lower-income Paris suburbs made it harder to socialize because of the cost of hanging out in bars or the difficulty of getting home at night once the regional trains stopped running.</p>
<h3><strong>Impacting inequality</strong></h3>
<p>Sociologist van Zanten approves of the diversifying of elite French institutions, but also worries that educational policies in France increasingly focus on “rescuing” the best students from poor neighborhoods rather than trying to increase opportunities for larger numbers of students. Another recent program introduced nationally, <em>meilleurs</em><em> </em><em>bacheliers</em><em> </em>("best bachelors"), provides additional opportunities to the top 10 percent of finishers in the high-school final exams. </p>
<p>CEP student Mamadou Sissoko notes he’d like to see more done to expand opportunities for friends from his old neighborhood. </p>
<p>“We’ve shown the world that we can succeed,” he says, “but also that there are others behind us. We need to do more to help even more people.”</p>
Education, Development & Educationhttp://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-05/french-take-affirmative-action-relies-geography-not-raceMon, 05 Dec 2016 12:45:00 -0500PRI.org Latest from The World and the GlobalPostPRI's The WorldOne of France's elite universities has a program that's inspired by American-style affirmative action. But it's not based on ethnicity or color — and some students say that's for the better.Sirine Bidjou (right) and Hanifa Benrahou (left) are both students at Sciences Po, which they entered through the CEP program. It's France's answer to American-style affirmative action.
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